


The Darkness Within

by whymzycal



Category: Saiyuki
Genre: Alternate Universe - Horror, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-21
Updated: 2010-09-21
Packaged: 2017-10-12 02:08:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 23,447
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/119616
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whymzycal/pseuds/whymzycal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's classic horror, baby: a small, creepy town; a hot Chicago reporter; a murder-suicide (or two); and a man with a dark, terrible secret. Contains murder, suicide, madness, and gore (including disembowelment).</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Darkness Within

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kansouame](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kansouame/gifts).



> Written for **kansouame** for the 2010 7tnight_smut exchange. Thanks to my awesome betas, **despina_moon** and **moshesque** , and to the ultra-fab cheerleading squad—you ladies know who you are. &hearts Nearly everything and everyplace I mention here is fictional, borrowed from early horror stories (mostly from Lovecraft) because I thought the names were cool. Also, I've taken great liberties with the geography of Pennsylvania. Despite that, I hope you enjoy this!

_Life is often a terrible thing, and the oppressive truths that lurk behind our most pleasant expressions can make it a heavy burden. So I have always thought, and so have the people of Marysville always known. No one in that town has ever felt a moment's true happiness. A darkness hangs in its very air, and has since the tragedies of my childhood—since before my birth. None in Marysville have lived free of horror, not even the first settlers who worked the land and built their homesteads in that lonely valley. And now that I am free of that place and have seen how other people live, I cannot help but wonder why entire families—an entire town—should suffer so. What_ secret _does my birthplace hold? What sins could we have committed, to be damned as we are? I find that I am resolved; I shall remain ignorant no longer. Tomorrow I return home, to Marysville, to discover its truths—no matter how terrible they may be._

Franklin Small set the pages down and scrubbed an ink-stained hand over his face. The opening paragraph could have come straight from his own pen—though without, he hoped, the over-done sense of melodrama. He glanced back at the byline. "The Marysville Terror" was by John Edgar Holt, a writer new to _Weird Tales_ magazine, and one Small didn't recognize. He skimmed the next couple paragraphs again, trying to tune out the commotion two desks over. Sam Bridges was frowning, licking the tip of his pencil as he muttered to himself in between transcribing shorthand notes to be sent down for the evening edition print run and shouting over his shoulder at their editor. Small sighed.

"Hey, Sam? D'you think you could maybe take that into Grey's office instead of making a ruckus and disturbing the rest of us?"

"Huh? What, like you're doin' anything? You've been reading that magazine I saw you snitch from downstairs since Monday. An' I'm not botherin' anyone else." Bridges drew in a deep breath and bellowed, "IS ANYONE BOTHERED BY ME? 'CEPT SMALL? Ow!" He flinched and rubbed his temple as a pencil flung from Grey's office clattered onto his desk. "OKAY, EXCEPT SMALL AND GREY," he amended. The two junior reporters working across the room didn't bother to look up from their typewriters, they were so used to the shouting and projectiles. "See? It's just you." Bridges grinned.

"Bully for you, Sam," Small muttered. He scrubbed his hand over his face again. "Just—could you try keeping it down? Just this once?" He hated that the question came out less irritated and more beseeching.

The grin slid off Bridges' face, and he blinked. "Okay." He stuck his pencil behind his ear and shuffled the papers on his desk into a messy stack before picking them up. "When I'm done with this, if you need any help, I'm not on deadline tonight. I c'n—" He shrugged carelessly. "If you need any help."

Damn it. Small shook his head. "Naw," he said breezily. "I'm just doing some research. I have an idea for a story that could be big, and if I do it right, we could get picked up nationally." He waved at _Weird Tales_. "They say truth is stranger than fiction, and this story's got me thinking. That's all."

"Sure," Bridges said, shrugging again. The expression in his eyes didn't change, though; he wasn't fooled. Small looked back down at "The Marysville Terror," pointedly ignoring him, and relaxed as Bridges took the hint. Bridges walked in the direction of Grey's office without saying anything else, and Small was free to read through the rest of the story without any distractions. He felt himself grow alternately hot and cold as he turned the pages, reading the story for the hundredth time. Somehow, this Holt fellow had managed to capture both the way he felt about Arkham and the effects it had on the people living there. Even the descriptions of Marysville's streets and surrounding scenery made him feel nervous and uneasy, the way he'd often felt as a child growing up in Arkham. It was uncanny, and since he'd first read the story few days earlier, he hadn't been able to concentrate on his work. He'd been distracted and easily irritated, starting arguments with the junior reporters and dodging pencils thrown from the editor's office twice an hour instead of only twice a day. It'd been nearly a week of these shenanigans, and he figured it was only a matter of time before Grey snapped. He had to pull himself together before—

"Small!" Grey's shout rang out from somewhere in the dusty shadows of his office. Small jerked upright in his chair.

"Yeah, boss?" He tried to keep the flinch of guilty distraction from his voice and expression, but a sidelong glance over at Sam Bridges, now emerging from Grey's office, showed he hadn't managed it. Bridges' wide golden eyes flashed sympathy at him, but he turned back to the transcriptions in his hand when Small glared and mouthed for him to _mind your own damn business, kid._

"Get in here," rasped Grey.

Small slunk away from his desk and into Grey's office, closing the door behind him. The office was small and close, the air hazy with stale cigarette smoke. It made his fingers itch to light his own, to give him something to do with his hands so it would be easier to ignore Grey's penetrating glare.

"Yeah." He dropped into the chair in front of Grey's desk, barely resisting the urge to kick up his feet and rest them on the leaning tower of proofs stacked at its edge to prove he wasn't intimidated.

"I don't give a damn what your problem is, Small. Shut up!" Grey barked as Small opened his mouth to snap back. "I want to know—is there a story in it somewhere? One that won't be a complete waste of my time?"

Small took a deep breath. He wasn't ready for this, but if he didn't do it now—

"Yeah. Yeah, I think there is. I've been keeping an eye on the number of stories about murders by people who've inexplicably gone mad, especially in small, isolated towns. They're going up. I can't say if it's because there are more murders or the public's ghoulish interest is on the rise, but there's a definite jump in the reports. They're even up in fiction." He tilted his head in the direction of his own desk and his copy of _Weird Tales,_ then leaned forward, hands clasped between his knees to keep from giving away the faint trembling of his fingers. "Look, something happened a couple months ago—in the town I'm from. And it's not the first time in the last thirteen years, or even the second or third. People keep … Uh. A woman killed her family, then herself." Small looked away from Grey quickly, telling himself that the twitch of Grey's lips was impatience, not sudden understanding or—God forbid—sympathy. The bastard didn't have a heart, and it wasn't like Small himself really cared about it anymore. "It's a hard life out there, harder than most, but that's no reason why—" He cleared his throat, then started again. "No, there's got to be _some_ reason—"

"How long do you need?" Grey's sharp question cut through Small's fumbling explanation, and he stopped short, heart beginning to race.

"Need? I—" Small spread his hands helplessly, suddenly not caring that Grey might see them shaking a little. "A couple weeks? A month? People from small towns don't like to talk, you know? It's not like here in Chicago. And even though I'm from there, I left when I was still just a kid. It might, uh, take a while to get them to say anything. I don't even know if I still know anybody. Maybe they left. Maybe they're … they're gone." He gauged Grey's deepening frown and hurried on. "I can still look through the town's records easy, track down some old family papers if I ask the right questions of the right people. Little old ladies love to gossip amongst themselves about local history—if there's a hint of scandal, that's even better. If any of them remember me, they'll talk." He dropped his hands to his knees and squeezed, trying to look calm even if Grey wouldn't be fooled.

Grey pulled a cigarette from the silver case in front of him and struck a match. The acrid smell of his tobacco filled the warm, hazy air. "I can give you a month. But this had better turn out to be something, Small, or I'm docking your pay for the expenses." He inhaled and held the smoke in for a moment before blowing it across the desk and into Small's face. "Take Sam. We might get some real work done around here without you useless slobs causing me trouble."

Small gripped his knees more tightly. "I—Sam's great, a real cracking good junior, but no one'll talk with him around. He's obviously an outsider, but I grew up there. Sorry, boss, but there's more chance at a story if I go alone." Small grinned weakly. If Bridges didn't already know anything about his past, he wanted to keep it that way. He hated the pitying looks people gave him once they found out. And Arkham wasn't the place for someone like Sam Bridges, anyway. The kid was too cheerful, too friendly to take to a place as darkly oppressive as Small's hometown.

"Suit yourself." Grey blew more smoke across his desk, and Small stifled a cough. His heart was still racing, and Grey's office was getting too warm. He reached up and tugged at his collar. He needed to get out, to get some air, to _think._

"I'm going to check the train schedules," he muttered, pushing himself to his feet and moving towards the door.

"Small." Grey's voice stopped him in the doorway, and he turned around. "Send a wire every couple days. I want to know what's going on." Grey's eyes narrowed as Small raised an eyebrow in surprise. Grey pointed the cigarette at him threateningly. "If the story's big enough and there's enough interest, it could go national." His eyes flicked to somewhere in the general direction of Sam Bridges' desk, and then he looked back at Small, his gaze sharpening. "I want to make sure you don't ruin our chances. Now get the hell out of my office and go do some real work."

Small went, cuffing Bridges gently in thanks as he headed back to his desk to collect _Weird Tales_ and a small book grown fat with yellowing, paste-backed newspaper articles. Since he'd gotten the job at the _Gazette_ and gained access to any number of local and national newspapers, he'd painstakingly clipped and preserved all the stories he could find about Arkham or tragedies like the ones he remembered from his childhood. They might be a good place to start asking questions when he returned home.

~*~

  
Two days later, Small leaned back in his seat and rubbed at his tired eyes, the motion unconsciously mimicking the rhythm of the train speeding along the tracks. He was headed for Arkham, Pennsylvania, and the faint, queasy tightness in his stomach grew with every mile.

The scrapbook of clippings sat at the bottom of his satchel, buried under pages of notes, maps, and train schedules. He couldn't stand to read through it or "The Marysville Terror" one more time, though. Instead, he tried to relax. In only a few more hours, he'd be facing the town and the past he'd left behind as a scared, skinny boy of twelve. There would be plenty of time to think about how his family's tragedy and the ones that had happened since then were connected to Arkham's most recent deaths. Small shifted in his seat, unconsciously distancing himself from his satchel. He closed his eyes and let his head drop back, blanking his mind with some effort, and eventually the regular _shunt-shunt_ ing of the train lulled him into a doze.

Somewhere along the line, the doze turned into a true sleep that was broken with a jolt when the train's whistle blew. Small snapped upright as the train juddered to a stop. The tracks out in the rural areas of Pennsylvania weren't as well maintained as the ones he'd gotten used to elsewhere, and the rough stop threw him off balance for a minute. He squinted blearily at the smudge where his cheek had been resting against the window, then craned his neck to get a look at the station. It was more than a decade shabbier, but still familiar: Jacksonville, right where he needed to get off. He stood up slowly, stretching his legs and arms and twisting to relieve the stiffness in his back, then collected his satchel and suitcase before heading out to the platform.

The platform was mostly deserted, only a few men and women standing on the weather-warped wooden planks that raised passengers to the trains' boarding level. Small tipped a wink at the woman waiting to be handed into the carriage he'd just exited, but she pointedly ignored him, her back stiff as she turned her head so the brim of her old-fashioned hat blocked him from view. Neither she nor the men around her had the exhausted, nervous look that he'd always associated with Arkham's townspeople, so they must have been local to Jacksonville. That meant his ride wasn't here yet. He glanced back at the woman, who was ignoring him so hard she was almost vibrating from the stiffness in her spine. He smirked. He knew he looked disreputable: hatless with his too-long hair falling out of the length of twine he used to tie it back, sweaty from the summer heat, and rumpled from sleeping in the passenger car.

"Small," said a rough voice somewhere off the platform. Small turned towards the caboose-end of the train and saw a tall, rawboned man in dust-streaked overalls. His shirt was stained at the collar and under the arms, dark patches of sweat making the cotton stick to his chest as he waved Small over. "Frankie Small," he repeated. He stretched his mouth in something that could have been a smile, but which looked more like a pained grimace.

It was Jeb Ward, owner of the Arkham general store, a lot more haggard and wrinkled than Small remembered. He fought an immediate urge to call everything off and climb back onto the train, then gripped his suitcase and satchel tightly as he made his careful way over to where Ward was standing a few yards away from his wagon. The horses glared at him balefully as he drew near, and he sidestepped as the closer of the two raised its leg and pawed at the ground.

"You've grown, boy," said Ward, squinting. His gaze lingered on Small's face, on the thin scars and distinctive red hair that made him instantly recognizable even now that he was a man of twenty-five. Ward nodded once, apparently satisfied. "Good, the better to load up—earn your way to town. Help me unload at the store, then you c'n walk to Mary Allen's boarding house. Even if it was still standing, I don't s'pose you'd stay at the old place, would you?" The grimace turned softer at the corners, as though tempered by pity. Small answered instinctively with the defensive smile of his childhood, teeth bared and lips thinned, and felt something cold and heavy drop into the pit of his stomach.

"Yeah," he said quietly. "Yeah, I don't suppose I would."

The social niceties—such as they were—now exchanged, Small took off his jacket and draped it over his suitcase. For the next hour, he helped Ward finish loading his wagon with the barrels and crates stacked nearby from an earlier train, then climbed gratefully onto the seat. It was a good thing he hadn't worn his better suit for the trip; this one was ruined. He wondered if he'd be able to get Grey to pay for it on top of his month's salary if his story turned into something worthwhile.

Yeah. Like hell he would. Small sighed and reached between his knees, fumbling through his folded jacket for the pocket. He pulled out his cigarettes and some matches, tipping the smokes in Ward's direction out of politeness. Ward flicked an unreadable glance at him before turning his eyes firmly back to the hard dirt road in front of them. Small took that as a _no_ and lit up for himself. The simple act of inhaling and exhaling, the smoke only a few degrees cooler than the air around him, was soothing. He lit up another cigarette, and then another a little while after the first two were done. Half an hour gone, and at least another two to go before they entered the valley.

"Why'd you come back?"

Small flicked the butt of his cigarette onto the dirt and tried to hide his surprise. He hadn't expected Ward to talk to him much beyond a _put 'em there—easy, now_ and a _mind that barrel, boy._ He'd been taciturn when Small was young, and Small would have thought that the intervening years would count him as more a stranger than an insider in Ward's mind. He squinted against the sunlight and made a noncommittal grunting sound.

Ward turned and gave him a hard look. "Nobody ever comes back, not once they're lucky enough to get away." Huh. There it was. Now Ward's voice was tinged with the suspicion that any small-town citizen had when talking to outsiders.

"I don't know." Small answered slowly. "It just … I felt like I had to come back. Might be I have some unfinished business here." It was half the truth; it would have to suffice.

They continued on in silence, the horses' hooves thudding dully against the dirt and raising little puffs of dust with each _clop._ Ward kept staring at him, his gaze starting to make Small's skin prickle. It made Small want another cigarette, but he refused to give in. Finally Ward spoke again, the words coming heavy and slow.

"Might be better to leave business alone. 'Business' can get a body into trouble in Arkham. You oughta know that, Small." He snapped the reins a little, and the horses picked up their pace. Small gritted his teeth until he'd adjusted to the extra bone-rattling bounce.

"Yeah, I know. But I have to."

After that there was even less to say. Ward gave him a short _over that hill_ an hour and a half later, and then they were cresting the last hill into the valley. Just like that, Small was back. He squinted at the strange brightness of the light, though the air itself had an odd quality to it. The landscape spreading out on the valley floor should have been crisp and clear in the overly bright light, but everything seemed slightly blurred, as though seen through a thin, permanent haze that leached a layer color from everything it touched, including the sky. The scent of the air changed, too, going from a mix of the dirt road and the heady smell of a Pennsylvania summer to a metallic tang with the sharp edge of a deep chill. The air smelled _cold,_ like the bitterest Chicago winter, but it was still hot and a little thick, just as summer air ought to be.

The air pressed closer, wrapping itself around him as they continued down the hill. The weight of it made Small's breath come up short and his stomach clench. He was still trying to sort himself out when they reached the valley floor and started up Main Street. It was like time had compressed and the distant past had come crashing into his present. He looked down the road, almost expecting to see his brother Douglas coming towards him. But Douglas was in Cleveland with Louise and their son. He blinked, and the buildings along either side of the street shimmered in the heat, dispelling the memory. Another minute, and the wagon turned a corner before pulling up behind a large brick building that turned out to be the general store. Small stepped down from the wagon, a little unsteady on his feet. He told himself it was mostly the ache in his muscles and back from the rough ride.

Unloading the wagon went a little quicker when Ward's skinny fourteen-year-old son appeared to lend a hand. Small watched him carefully out of the corner of his eye. The boy was pale and nervous and twitchy, much as Small himself had been near that age, and Small was afraid he'd drop a crate on himself and break a leg—or worse. But he did well enough, even if he did stop once or twice to stare at Small with dark, hollow eyes.

"You go on, Joe," Ward said when they were nearly done. "You go and see your grandma, and get yourself some supper." Joe nodded jerkily at his father and ran up the street, kicking up little clouds of dirt behind him, as Small reached for the last barrel. He and Ward got it onto the ground, and he wrestled it into the store's back room on his own. When he went back outside, the last two crates were stacked by the door, ready to be carried in. Small bent down to grab one, but Ward's grip on his arm stopped him. Small looked at Ward's hand just below his elbow, and then at Ward's face.

"Won't leave well enough alone, will you, Small? You'll finish your business and damn the consequences." Ward's voice was hard, but his eyes, shadowed by too many years of a hard life and old grief, weren't. His wife had drowned herself in Chapman's Brook not long after Joe had been born, Small remembered suddenly. Some of the townspeople had said she'd done it out of dread he'd somehow smother in his sleep, like the other two had. And some had whispered that Ward had drowned her to save his son the way he hadn't been able to save his baby daughters. In Arkham, either could have been true. Ward's grip tightened, bringing Small back to himself. "We're all damned, here. I wonder if coming back makes you doubly damned."

"I couldn't say. But if there's truth to that, I'll find out."

Ward let go. "Then I hope you finish whatever business you've left undone, Small. But I'd take it as a kindness if you didn't come around much while you're here. I've my boy to look after, and if trouble follows you, I don't want it at my door. We've all had trouble enough. Even you." He shook his head in what Small took to be resigned disbelief.

Small smiled faintly, this time getting it closer to real, not defensive. "Thanks for the ride into town," he said. He tucked his jacket under his arm and picked up his suitcase and satchel, and he didn't look back as he followed the fading afternoon sun in the direction of Mary Allen's boarding house.

~*~

  
Mary Allen had been a creepy old lady when Small was ten, and while he'd been willing to consider that his memories of her might be warped by childhood flights of fancy, he hadn't been wrong. She was still a creepy old lady, though a little frailer, but somehow she seemed far more sinister to him now. She was stooped and wrinkled just as she'd always been, and her dress and manners were still impeccable, commanding respect. But he could see now what he'd only intuited as a child: her eyes had a hard, chitinous gleam to them, and her yellowed teeth seemed unnaturally sharp in a mouth that was set in a permanent, slightly cruel sneer.

Hers was the only boarding house in town, built by one of the original settlers in the valley, and it saw a brisk business thanks to the Dunwich Institution. Standing five miles outside Arkham, the county asylum was often filled to near capacity. Relatives of the patients would stay at Mary Allen's while their loved ones were brought to or from the asylum, or on rare occasions when the patients were deemed quiet and recovered enough to allow a visit. But nobody from the town who didn't work there ever took the road from behind Mary Allen's place to the Institution. There was hysteria and madness enough in the town itself—even if nobody called it by that name—to quell any sort of morbid, curious peering at the asylum's inmates or even its grounds. The unspoken truth was that the frenetically high-pitched, cackling laughter and sharp, throbbing screams muffled in the town's drawing rooms and bedrooms were easier to call exceptionally high spirits or particularly bad night terrors if nobody had the true sounds of madness to compare them to.

Small finished scrubbing his neck with a wet flannel and let it drop in the washbasin. The water was a cloudy, murky brown from the dust and sweat of his labors and the wagon ride. He squinted at his image in the small mirror over the washbasin, at the damp, messy red hair and the dark mahogany brown of his eyes gone nearly black in the flickering candlelight. A couple drops of water clung to the thin scars under his left eye, and a small rivulet ran down the ugly, raised scar on his left shoulder. He rubbed his thumb along the thick scar, the flesh feeling strange and rubbery under the pad of his thumb.

He could barely remember stumbling into the woodshed that night, rough nails cutting into his cheek and tearing his shoulder open as he squirmed and scrabbled at the woodpile, trying to disappear behind the stacks of dry, splintery firewood. Much clearer was the memory of his father's last, bubbling breaths through the gaping slash across this throat. He could still hear his mother's shrieks, broken by the furious sobs that might have sounded like laughter to someone standing in the road outside. He'd curled into a ball, head buried between his knees and bloody palms pressed against his ears so all he could hear was his own terrified, panting breaths. He'd kept his eyes shut and his face hidden so he couldn't see his mother's scarlet-dyed hands, one still clutching the knife, reaching towards him through the woodshed door. Douglas must have come home not long after their mother had driven the knife through her stomach, pushing so hard it had stuck in her spine. He'd been too numb with terror to make a sound when Douglas had pulled him from the woodshed, but he'd kicked and thrashed his way free of his brother's arms when he'd caught a glimpse of their mother, crumpled on the ground a few yards away from the shed. He didn't remember running into the house or falling against the table and knocking the lamp over. He only remembered the rush of heat, the hungry crackle of the flames, and Douglas picking him up and carrying him into the road as their house burned behind them.

Small flinched at a knock on the door. He draped a towel over his shoulders and went over to open it."Y-yeah?" he said to the sallow, pinched-looking man standing outside.

The man smiled, a quick, feral flash of teeth. "Mr. Small, do you need anything? My mother's retired for the night, and I'm about to go to bed myself once the house is locked up." Zephram Allen, named after the man who'd built the house, looked a lot like his namesake—if the cracked portrait hanging in the parlor downstairs was anything to go by. He also took after his mother quite a bit, judging by his smile and the cold look in his beetle-black eyes. Small felt a shiver twitch its way down his spine, like a giant spider doing a crazy dance down to the small of his back.

"No, thanks," he said. He hoped he'd kept the thread of unease out of his voice. He flashed a reflexive, teeth-baring Arkham grin of his own, then let it slide into a grimace as Zephram turned back down the hall. He closed the door and, after a few seconds' consideration, tilted the nearby chair and wedged it under the doorknob. He was careful to be quiet. Small wasn't a cautious person back in Chicago, but something about being back in Arkham—something more sinister and oppressive than the memory of his parents' deaths—had the hairs standing up at the back of his neck and a low, indefinable buzz pricking him at the base of his skull.

He slept lightly that night, waking twice to the sound of the doorknob turning and a scratching in the lock. He woke once more before dawn, this time to a thin, hissing laugh that sounded as though it could have come from the attic above—or perhaps it had only come from the tail end of the uneasy dream he'd been having.

When he woke for the day, it didn't take him long to get dressed for the breakfast the boardinghouse was meant to provide. All he wanted was a hot cup of joe and maybe a slice of toast. Mrs. Allen provided both, glancing with an avid curiosity at the satchel he shoved under his chair. Small ignored her curiosity in favor of watching as she brewed the coffee and made the toast, and he waited for her to sit and take a bite of jam-slathered bread before tucking in to his own.

"'Sgood," he muttered, licking a blob of the sweet jam from the corner of his mouth. Mrs. Allen beamed so widely that her gums were visible. Small covered his instinct to wince by slurping his coffee.

"Strawberries from last year's harvest up at Dunwich House," she said with a note of pride. "My brother works for the family. Of course," she continued, her grin faltering and her eyes narrowing, "there's only young master Arthur now." She glared at the jam jar. "Such a fine old family they were, pillars in this town—in the county. You might not remember, but they did such fine work, such fine, fine work with the … disturbed." Her voice lowered to a soft croon on the last word. "I worked in the house myself for years. Mr. Neville Dunwich was the finest employer and doctor in all of Pennsylvania, if you ask me. It's a pity, an avoidable pity, what happened to them. If only he'd been less soft-hearted with that girl! Nothing but trouble, she was, spoiled and petted, but that wasn't enough for her, not for the honor they did her! Oh, no. No, not for Miss Susan!" Mrs. Allen's mouth worked furiously for a moment. Her hands shook as she tore her toast in two. "And young master Arthur isn't half the man his father or uncles were. He spent so much time away at school, he's lost touch with his family's responsibilities, their obligations to the community!" Bread and jam squelched between her fingers as she clenched her fist.

"Mother," said Zephram from somewhere behind him. Small turned to watch his progress into the room. He didn't like having Zephram behind him, not when Small thought he'd already left the house. Zephram was dressed in a sober brown suit, his hair neatly combed and his face arranged into what he probably was imagined was a pleasant expression. Mrs. Allen dropped the ruined bread onto her plate and smeared the jam along the front of her apron.

"Last night my mother mentioned something about you going to the courthouse this afternoon?" said Zephram. His eyes bored into Small's.

"Yeah," Small replied. He took another gulp of coffee and finished the last corner of his toast. "I need to check the, uh, deeds to the old place. I think the land still belongs to me and my brother. He's stuck in Cleveland, and he asked me to look into it."

"If you want an early start, I could get those records for you," Zephram said. "I work at the courthouse, as a clerk."

Swell. Of course he worked at the courthouse. And he'd be looking over Small's shoulder, scrutinizing everything he did. Small swallowed the dregs of his coffee to buy himself some time and hide his frown. Was this what it had been like for his parents? For Douglas? The constant feeling of unwelcome scrutiny, the pressure of intense eyes watching everything they did? Was this the feeling he remembered from his childhood? Some of it, probably. But there was something more, too. Something darker, something inexplicable, something even a stupid little kid had been able to tell was more than this. He could feel it in the prickling at the back of his head.

"Yeah, that'd be great," Small said. He scooted his chair back from the table and picked up his satchel as he stood. "Thanks for the joe and the toast, Miz Allen. And the jam." Mary Allen only watched him leave, jammy hands folded in her lap, her mouth crooked in its customary sneer.

The walk to the courthouse didn't take long, though the rising heat of the summer morning made it feel like three miles instead of one. By the time he mounted the courthouse's steps, Small's shirt was sticking to his back under his vest and jacket. Things weren't much more comfortable after four fruitless hours of dodging Zephram and sneaking brief looks at death certificates that gave him little information beyond what he already had. Finally, in frustration, Small called it quits. He'd already known that the number of accidental and suspicious deaths, not to mention murders and suicides, were unusually high in and around Arkham. If this was all there was to find, he might as well slink back to Chicago and Grey's pointed ridicule. But of course he wouldn't. He couldn't. He wouldn't give Grey—or Arkham itself—the satisfaction.

Zephram Allen watched him with cold eyes as he collected his things to head for the town's small library. Small doubted he'd find much of interest there, but if he was lucky, they would have back issues of the local paper to look through. Maybe he'd be able to find some old volumes on the town's history. He had a feeling that Arkham had always been a dangerous, secretive place, and even if all he found was innuendo and euphemism, it would do—he could read between the lines as well as any other crack reporter.

~*~

  
Three days later, Small sat in the tiny, dusty back room of the Arkham library with most of his new information spread out in front of him. Much of what he had found was disturbing. He had a list of names and dates of the dead that he'd gotten from the round-faced, nervous old man who kept the records at the courthouse, and a careful perusal of the county's _Chronicle_ back issues for October 1903 through May 1916, two months ago, gave him simple phrases like, "resident of Arkham," "late of Arkham," "temporarily resided in Arkham," "rest cure in Arkham," and "extended visit in Arkham" to append to his list. The last three phrases clearly indicated a stay at the Dunwich Institution, though Small supposed it was possible that at least one or two of the names corresponding to those phrases might have been people only passing through or legitimately visiting Arkham for some other reason. But the causes of death taken from the certificates, ranging from "drowning" to "stabbing" to "hunting accident" to "poisoning" to "dismemberment," nearly always happened in groups.

People in Arkham died together, and almost never of old age or illness.

The most obvious connection between all the victims—and murderers, in many cases—was location. Either the town or the Dunwich Institution appeared in the dead men and women's recent past, according to the newspapers. Small had decided two days ago to ignore the clippings he'd gathered of insanity-driven killings in New York, Chicago, and everywhere else that wasn't here. He had more than enough to work with by limiting himself to the sixty-three names on the list that began with his parents and ended with the Dunwich family. He'd thought about looking back another dozen years or so, but he didn't want to return to the courthouse. Zephram Allen's suspicious eyes followed him out the door every morning and up the stairs every evening, and he suspected that Zephram Allen's eyes were on him for part of every night as well. His door was tried each night, the knob turned and the lock worked, and he still woke up to a thin, hissing laugh not long after first light. His dreams were bleak. He woke from them shivering and covered in gooseflesh. Small could taste blood and Arkham well water, bitter and metallic and with a keen, cold edge, at the back of his throat when he gasped into wakefulness.

Small sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. He'd done as much as he could with what he'd gathered so far. He'd tried talking to a few of the older residents, people who remembered his family. Unsurprisingly, they turned away from him, refusing to speak beyond an insincere greeting or shallow, suspicious pleasantries. Jeb Ward had done the same when he went to the general store to buy some supplies and ask a couple questions. None of the men or women his own age would talk to him, either. A few he remembered from the small schoolhouse, classmates a year or so older or younger. He hadn't seen them since the day he and Douglas had left Arkham, thirteen years ago. They were thin and worn now, their eyes and mouths bracketed by deep wrinkles, their brows permanently furrowed and their complexions pale and gray. One or two had high, nervous laughs that reminded him uncomfortably of his mother in the year leading up to that October night.

The only thing left to try was the asylum. Small supposed it was possible that his mother had been a patient there, before he or even Douglas had been born. At the very least, two thirds of the people on his list had had some dealings with the Dunwich Institution on one occasion. It was worth a try. He was due to wire Grey another update tomorrow, and if he didn't have anything to report, Grey would probably send him a short, scathing telegram in return and threaten to fire him. He wasn't worried about losing his job, but giving Grey the satisfaction of even writing it down rankled.

Small pulled his watch from his pocket. It was too late to head out to the Institution this afternoon, even if he borrowed a horse, and he didn't relish the idea of being out in Arkham at night. Judging by the some of the looks he'd been given over the last couple days, he might find himself dumped in the river, pushed in the path of a wagon, or even stabbed in the street as a "suspicious character." He shuffled his papers together into a sloppy pile and shoved them in his satchel. If he hurried, he would be back at the boardinghouse an hour or two before Zephram. And if he avoided Mrs. Allen until suppertime, he might be able to catch a little shut-eye before the sun set and the nocturnal disturbances began.

~*~

  
It was a five-mile walk to the other side of the valley where the Dunwich Institution stood, and Small was grateful he'd finally gotten some decent sleep. Nobody in town was willing to lend him a horse. They had stared at him with closed expressions, their eyes dull and their lips pressed into thin lines when he'd broached the subject. The air was growing warmer, but each breath still hit his throat and lungs with a knife's-edge bite, like it was the dead of winter. Chapman's Brook was so cold that his mouth and fingers went numb when he crouched beside it to drink. It left him with a bitter aftertaste and a headache that grew with every step that brought him closer to the asylum.

He lit a cigarette on the other side of the brook, inhaling deeply and letting the hot smoke soothe his throat and lungs. The smoke tasted rich and sweet, and breathing it in lessened the pain in his head. He was just lighting a second one when he caught sight of a large, dark smudge in the distance. As he drew nearer, the smudge resolved itself into a tall stone building surrounded by a high brick wall. The grounds surrounding the wall were a uniformly soft, hazy gray-green even in the strong morning sunlight, and the trees looked to be shrouded in a fine, dirty gauze that snaked up their trunks and hung from their branches. It pooled and eddied at the base of the wall, and a few thin tendrils spread up and across the bricks, reaching towards the sky.

The gauzy, gray-green haze turned out to be a low-lying fog, thick and cool and unaffected by the summer sun. It smelled cold and musty, like damp stone and spoiled mushrooms. Small shivered. He'd never seen anything like it before, not anywhere in the valley—he would have remembered something like this. The way the fog wrapped clammy fingers around his ankles and flowed sluggishly up his calves made him consider turning back, but he couldn't. He shoved his left hand deep into his pocket and gripped his satchel tighter with his right, kicking his way forward, up to the iron gate that broke the line of the wall. The gate was unattended but looked to be unlocked. He reached through the bars to lift the latch. It shrieked horribly, raising the hairs on the back of his neck.

Small followed the wide lane leading to the asylum's heavy wooden door. The grounds were silent. No bird called, no insect buzzed. No noise came from within—neither a whisper of mad laughter nor the shouts of the disturbed. Small lifted the simple brass knocker and let it fall. The sound sounded strangely muffled, as though the fog had swallowed it. He let the knocker fall again, then stood back as the door swung open.

"I'm here to speak to the director about a patient," Small said into the widening gap. The door stopped moving.

"The Institution is not accepting patients at this time," replied a colorless voice. A tall, broad man with dirty blond hair and an orderly's uniform stepped into the gap to look Small up and down. "The new director is busy putting the Institution's affairs in order. There is another—"

"I'm not here for that," Small interrupted. "I'm here about a former patient." He stepped forward, frowning in a way he'd seen Grey use to great effect. "It'll only take a moment."

Grey's surly glare was apparently as effective on reluctant orderlies as it was on reporters and their juniors. Small found himself ushered into a gloomy corridor and led to an elegant mahogany door. The orderly disappeared inside for a few minutes, then reappeared. He held the door open and watched Small as he entered and crossed to the other door. Small rapped his knuckle against the jamb.

"Please come in," said a smooth, pleasant voice. The accent was cultured and polite, and Small was suddenly interested in what sort of man would have a voice like that, especially in Arkham. He stepped into the room and found himself facing a pale, slender man about his own age with dark hair and glasses, and eyes the deep, liquid green of a forest pool reflecting the color of pine needles. And then he mentally kicked himself for the flowery comparison. Grey would have laughed himself sick if he had any idea Small could think in those terms.

Small set his satchel down and extended his hand. "Franklin Small," he said coolly, to cover his embarrassment.

"Arthur Dunwich." Dunwich's touch was careful, almost tentative. His fingers were pleasantly cool as they slid across Small's palm and curved around his hand. Small felt a jolt travel up his arm and down his back as Dunwich's fingertip brushed over his knuckle. He felt the jolt again when Dunwich smiled, a soft curve of his lips that showed no teeth, and pressed his hand warmly before drawing back. "I understand you have some questions about a former patient?" Dunwich gestured to a chair standing in front of the large desk situated in front of a wide window, then settled himself in his own chair once Small had taken a seat.

"Yeah," Small answered. He surreptitiously rubbed his thumb across his fingertips. Dunwich's grip had been strong but gentle, and he could still feel the impression of Dunwich's hand around his own. "I'm not sure when she was a patient," he began, but Dunwich held up a hand to stop him.

"I'm not in the habit of divulging private information without good cause, Mr. Small. And I must inform you that I am new to this position. I don't have any particular knowledge of past cases, and I'm afraid that I have been busy with family matters in addition to those relating to the Institution." Dunwich touched his pocket unconsciously, then folded his hands and rested them on the desk. He projected a studied calm, but something flashed behind his eyes as he touched his pocket. It looked like regret, and underneath that, guilt and maybe even hopelessness. Small felt a frisson of recognition.

Dunwich wasn't like the rest of the people in Arkham.

He might exude a careful control, but beneath it was something different from what rest of the town exhibited. It wasn't the exhaustion of spirit, the nervousness, or the despair of the Jeb Wards of the town. It wasn't the strange malice of the Allens. A thread of excitement coiled low in Small's stomach and began rising. He might actually get somewhere with Dunwich. He might actually get some answers.

"She was my mother," Small said. "Caroline Small. She, uh. She died October 14th, 1903."

Something dark and secret—something guilty—flickered briefly in Dunwich's expression. Small's stomach clenched, and his left hand curled into a fist.

"She wasn't a patient at that time," Dunwich said mildly.

"No," Small agreed.

Dunwich's index finger twitched. "And you're not certain whether she was ever a patient here?"

"No," Small said.

"What leads you to believe she might have been?" Dunwich's expression smoothed itself, becoming impossibly bland. Like a mask.

Small steeled himself and went in for the kill. "She was suffering from some kind of hysteria before she slit my father's throat and gutted herself like a Christmas goose." He watched as Dunwich went paler and even more still.

"I'm very sorry for your loss, Mr. Small," Dunwich murmured after a moment. His hand went to his pocket again, fingers dipping inside to touch something.

Small shrugged. "It was thirteen years ago. But I want to know why."

"I see. I can understand that," Dunwich said. Some of his color had returned. He looked down at a ledger open on his desk and took up a pen, then dipped it in the inkwell and made a notation in a small, neat hand. "Well. I shall personally have a look in our records to see if there's any information on your mother. Though I must warn you that without a date for reference, it may take me some time. I have other responsibilities to see to, even with our number of patients greatly reduced."

"Thanks," Small said. He could tell a dismissal when he saw one, even if it was subtle and polite. He grabbed his satchel and stood. Dunwich stood with him and extended his hand again. Small took it, surprised. Dunwich's touch was still cool, but the press of his fingers was warmer. A pleasant shiver ran down Small's spine.

"I'll have the information for you tomorrow afternoon," Dunwich said. "Would you care to take tea with me then and discuss it?"

"Uh, tea?" Small looked down to where his hand was still clasped in Dunwich's. "Yeah. Yeah, okay. Here?"

"At Dunwich House. I can send my man Willitts with the motorcar to collect you—"

"No, that's—uh, that's okay. I'd rather walk," Small said. Dunwich gave his hand an almost imperceptible squeeze and let go. Small looked at him, at the smooth line of his cheek and the deep green of his eyes, in shadow behind his glasses.

"I'll expect you at four, then," Dunwich said.

"Yeah," Small replied. He turned towards the door, a little dizzy from the thoughts suddenly whirling through his mind. He had to get back into town and wire Grey.

"Mr. Small," Dunwich said quietly as Small stepped into the outer room. "I am truly sorry for your loss."

Small looked back over his shoulder and nodded once. Dunwich knew more than he was telling—maybe everything, even—but somehow, Small believed him. He really did look and sound like he was sorry.

~*~

  
An angry wind kicked up sometime after his lock stopped rattling that night, blowing in irregular gusts against his window and through the attic with a hollow sobbing sound, but somehow Small eventually sank into an uneasy sleep. He dreamt of his father, of his father's desperate, bubbling breaths and the lake of blood he was drowning in. His father reached out with a bloody hand, fingertips catching the ends of Small's hair and staining it redder as he sank below the surface one last time—

Small jerked awake at a thudding, scraping sound over his head. He lay still, hardly breathing as he tried to track the noise above him. Weak, rosy beams of light from the rising sun were trickling through the window. They gradually shifted to a pale, sickly yellow without him hearing another sound from the attic. Damn it—that was another too-early morning and another night's too-scarce sleep.

Small got out of bed and threw a shirt on over his wrinkled pants. He walked softly on bare feet, standing next to the chair wedged under the knob to listen at the door. Zephram Allen's slow, steady tread moved along the hall, past his door, and down the stairs. He heard the faint sound of Zephram's voice, and then the fainter, higher sound of Mrs. Allen answering him. The smells of bacon and coffee crept through the gap under his door, and his stomach jumped. He couldn't tell if it was because he was hungry or queasy. Small finished getting dressed and scraped his hair back from his face, squinting at his reflection in the mirror over the washbasin. His face was pale and his eyes were faintly bloodshot over dark circles. And he needed a shave. He tied his hair back with a length of twine and waited until he heard the soft _thud_ of the front door. Then he picked up the pitcher next to the washbasin and headed down the stairs.

He rushed through breakfast with Mrs. Allen's sneering gaze on the back of his neck, not even slowing down to appreciate the rich, salty taste of the bacon or the darkly sweet blackberry preserves on his toast. He spent a little more time on the coffee, though. A strong cup o'joe masked the strange, unpleasant taste of Arkham's water, and it woke him up a bit. Mrs. Allen's eyes stayed on him as he filled the pitcher, then turned away when he headed back to the stairs. Small felt a little lighter, knowing she wasn't watching him.

He was halfway done with shaving when he heard the door again. He listened carefully, razor poised beneath his chin, but heard nothing further. He set the razor down and went to the window. Mrs. Allen was crossing the street, a basket in her hands. Small narrowed his eyes, then dashed from the room and made his way to the back of the house, past closed doors that rattled softly in their jambs as he went by. He found it tucked in a corner, in a windowless hallway that came to an abrupt end: a steep, narrow staircase that led to the attic.

The door that opened into the attic had oiled hinges that moved soundlessly when Small swung it open. He breathed in air that was hot and heavy with dust and a queer, pulpy smell—like old paper gone to mold. Rectangular trunks with books stacked atop them, round hatboxes, and sheet-draped furniture stood everywhere. They looked like an impenetrable wall of junk at first, but then Small's eyes started to adjust. The light coming through the small, round window on the opposite wall was enough to see a clear path down the center of the attic, branching off at regular intervals to the left and right. Small followed the first branching and bent down, examining the floor. There were blobs of hardened wax clustered near a narrow slit in the middle of one of the boards, where a sliver of light shone through. He knelt down and put his eye to the slit, and saw a bureau with a porcelain pitcher and washbasin much like the one in his room. He squinted and turned his head to the side, and was just able to make out the foot of what looked like a bed.

Each of the branching paths led to a peephole over a room. The one closest to the round window was right over his bed. Small cursed quietly. It was a good thing he hadn't bothered to do any of his research or cross-checking of notes here at the boarding house. He didn't think the Allens would be able to read them from the narrow peepholes, much less tell what he was working on, but the idea still filled him with a sharp, burning anger. He didn't care that he'd pretty much figured they were watching him from the attic from the start, and he cared less that it had only been at night.

Small got up from the floor and leaned against a mound of papers tied up with string so he could look out the tiny window. Mrs. Allen was a little ways down the road, talking to someone. She gestured with the hand that wasn't holding the basket and pointed in the direction of the house. Small flinched and stumbled back, knocking over the mound of papers and dislodging a battered, leather-bound book that had been under them. The book fell open against his foot, revealing age-yellowed paper covered in faded, swooping writing with too many E's at the ends of words, and elongated S's that looked like F's. He hurriedly replaced the papers and then reached for the book, but froze when his eye fell on the phrase, "to madness, but Dunwich—"

Heart thumping, Small shoved the book down his shirt and backtracked to the narrow stairs. He was out of the attic and back in his room just as Mrs. Allen came back inside. It took him no more than ten minutes to transfer the book to his satchel, finish shaving, pull on his jacket, and leave the boardinghouse behind him.

He headed in the direction of the library first, getting within a few hundred yards before thinking better of it. The librarian mostly left him alone in the dim back room, but after discovering the little spy-holes in the attic, Small wanted to be out of Arkham—or at least, out of Arkham proper—before he opened the old book and started deciphering its contents. If he remembered it right, Dunwich House was about a mile west of the asylum. He'd have longer to walk today, but if he left now, he could find a quiet spot along the way and spend a few hours reading the old book in complete solitude—or at least with no one but the birds and squirrels to look over his shoulder. And if the book turned out to be nothing, he could use the extra time to look through his notes again, to come up with some pointed questions that would force Dunwich to think carefully before answering. Or—Small yawned hugely as he passed the general store—he could take a nap. He rubbed his eyes. Yeah, like he'd be able to sleep anytime soon.

Small was still yawning as he crossed the bridge over Chapman's Brook. He put down his satchel for a minute to light a cigarette, then started looking for a convenient tree to lean against or a rock to sit on. He didn't want to sit down much closer to Dunwich House, not if it was surrounded by the same eerie fog that covered the grounds around the Institution. The two buildings were separated by a decent distance, but they both backed up against the tall, rocky hills that defined the far side of the valley. Small was no expert on fog and wasn't sure how much ground it could cover, but he suspected that the regular rules wouldn't apply here, anyway. Not in Arkham. And the thought of standing still in that thick, clammy mess, much less sitting down in it and breathing it in, made his skin crawl.

He got maybe another quarter of a mile past the brook when he saw a likely spot: a broad oak with a wide, clear area beneath it. It was set apart from the rest of the trees, a little ways back from the road. He made a beeline for it and was settled with the book open and resting on his knee in short order.

The book proclaimed, in its first pages, to be "a true account of the finding of the hallowed ground and the dark god." Small frowned. He could feel a band of tightness creeping across his forehead, spreading out from his temples and insinuating itself behind his eyes as he squinted at the writing. The diffuse sunlight filtering through the oak's leaves made the ink look even more uneven and washed out than it had in the boardinghouse's attic. He thought about moving into the full sun, then decided against it. He'd be easier to see from the road, and even though he was plenty exposed here, there was something comforting about having the oak's trunk, wide and solid, at his back. Small bent closer to the book and turned the next page, and then the next.

He skimmed several pages describing the settlers' journey into Pennsylvania, glossing over the complicated syntax and archaic spelling as Allen chronicled their "many cruel hardships" and "privations." A few more pages after that told of their entry into the valley and their first encounter with the "queer air and strange light, and water so bitterly cold it was as if snow still sat upon the ground, though it was the fourth day of May." A few members of the party expressed unease about the valley some lines later, saying that the "sharpness of the wind" and "the vapors in the air oppressed them, disquieting their minds and disturbing their sleep." Small's eyelid twitched. If the site where Dunwich and Allen's party had decided to build Arkham had been so undesirable, why had they stayed? He rubbed his forehead with the back of his hand and read on.

Three pages later, he found it. Allen wrote of a cave that he, Dunwich, and two other men had discovered while exploring deeper in the valley. They entered the cave cautiously, torches held aloft, and made their way into a large chamber where a strange, glistening rock stood in the middle of a pool of shallow water. Allen described the water as so clear and still that the torchlight reflecting off its surface "dazzled our eyes, until we were quite blinded and dazed with it." Dunwich approached the rock, which glittered from some curious mineral embedded in its surface, and "stretched out a hand. Immediately upon touching it, a violent wind blew through the cavern and extinguished all torches but Howard's. In the weak torchlight, the rock seemed to shudder and heave, and It made Itself known to us. Ah, the dark and terrible god! I have felt Its breath and the touch of Its bitterly cold mind, so vast, on mine! The immensity of It drove Howard and Smith to madness, but Dunwich and I were spared. We recognized Its terrible greatness at once—"

Small skimmed the next page. Allen's writing went on like that, praising the strength and the power of "the god." He stopped at a line which read, "the sacrifice of Howard and Smith's reason seemed to please It," and felt the hairs on his arms stand up. He set the book aside and rummaged in his pocket for his cigarette case and a match.

There must have been some kind of poisonous gas, some noxious vapor in the cave that made people ill when they breathed it in. Or maybe there was a dangerous, undiscovered fungus growing on Dunwich and Allen's glittering rock, a toxic vegetable that spread its spores in the air and caused a madness when inhaled. Hell, it might be in both the water and the air—it might be everywhere in Arkham, driving the paranoia and delusions, the fear and madness. It might be the thing responsible for his mother's insanity and the strange hysteria that was always lurking beneath the surface here.

Small sucked in smoke and leaned his head back against the tree. The phenomenon of a group sharing a particular delusion or hysteria itself was nothing new, but two centuries of sustained madness at varying levels—it defied logic, almost as much as the idea of a rock that housed an occult god. He blew a smoke ring and watched it grow indistinct, rising higher and higher, then stubbed out the cigarette and returned to the book.

The rest of Allen's account made him feel a little ill and disturbed, himself. Allen drew a picture of two men who worshiped a god that fed on fear. The settlement grew and the town took shape, and Dunwich and Allen chose men and women to "sacrifice" to the god, poisoning them and terrorizing them—goading them to mad violence until they killed each other and themselves in ecstasies of insanity. In time, Allen promised, the town of Arkham would be as no more than a cattle pen for the god. As It grew in strength, Its influence would spread, and the daily misery of Arkham's inhabitants would continue to feed It with their paranoia and anxiety. One day, Allen wrote, the dark god would rise in all Its terrible splendor, and his and Dunwich's children would be Its chosen priests and handmaidens, and share in Its power over the world.

Except that wasn't the case anymore, was it? Small reached into his satchel and pulled out his book of clippings. He opened it to the last page and the articles pasted there, surrounded by notes in his sloppy script.

Arthur Dunwich was the last of his family. His father, two uncles, an aunt, and his sister had all died two months ago—at his sister's hand. It looked like the Dunwiches weren't immune to the vapor or spores or whatever affected nearly everyone else who lived in—or passed through—Arkham. They might have been the most important and influential family since Arkham's founding, but that hadn't saved them from the town's curse. And the Allens weren't much better off. According to his "true account," Zephram Allen had been a man with great power and influence in the early days, second only to Henry Dunwich. That power and influence had faded sometime after Allen had written his book. Mary Allen was powerful creepy, yeah, and her son was just as bad, but other than Mrs. Allen having worked at Dunwich House once, Small didn't see any connection between the present Dunwiches and Allens. There was definitely no evidence of a partnership like the one Zephram Allen described in his book. He wasn't even sure if Mary Allen and her son—or Arthur Dunwich's family—knew about the dark god, much less believed in it. If they did, the Allens must have been out of Its favor, reduced as they were to running a boardinghouse and spying on their boarders.

Small glanced out at the horizon. The sun had moved several degrees since he'd sat down to read. A cursory check of his watch revealed that he had around three hours before he was supposed to meet Arthur Dunwich for tea. It would be just enough time for him to fill a few pages of his scrapbook with a shorthand transcription of the more interesting parts of Zephram Allen's crazy book. Small dug through his satchel, looking for a pencil. He'd have another cigarette, then get started with the cavern and the first instance of insanity.

And then he'd bury the book under the tree.

~*~

  
Dunwich House crouched like a stone giant in a field of thick gray-green fog. It was a large building shaped somewhat like the asylum, with an extra wing and one less storey, and surrounded by a tall hedge. The fog rested against the hedge in drifts. It rose and fell in billowing waves, climbing higher and leaving wispy tendrils behind, then sinking down before surging upward again. Small shook himself and resisted the urge to hold his breath. The cold, musty smell of the fog surrounding the Institution, unpleasant as it had been, was still better than this. This heavy mist gave off a slightly miasmic, unwholesome odor—like the stench of stagnant, slime-choked water scented from miles away. Small turned down the tree-lined lane that led through the hedge and up to the house's large front door. The fog swirled around him, wrapping itself around his legs. It rose as high as his waist, chilling his hands and slowing his stride. He could feel it pressing against him, a cold weight that he had to push through, as though he was wading through water.

When he reached the door, it swung open before he could knock. A man in a butler's uniform stood there. The shape of his sneering mouth and the glittering coldness of his gaze instantly brought Mary and Zephram Allen to mind. He watched Small with narrowed eyes as Small crossed the threshold, then looked at the satchel in Small's hand.

"Naw, I'll hold on to it, thanks," Small said, anticipating the question. The butler curled his upper lip and seemed about to speak, but Dunwich's smooth, cultured voice came from the right.

"Mr. Small, welcome." Dunwich came forward and clasped his hand. His fingertip stroked the sensitive skin of Small's wrist before he let go. "If you'll follow me?" He smiled at Small, and Small felt a warm flutter low in his belly as he smiled back. The lingering chill from the fog and the tightness at his temples melted.

"Thank you, Willitts. That will be all for now," Dunwich said as he gestured for Small to walk with him. Small sneaked a glance at Willitts and saw that he was glaring at Dunwich, and then grinned at him when his glare shifted in Small's direction.

They walked down a narrow hallway and into a long room. Portraits hung all along the wall facing the window. One, of a beautiful woman with long chestnut hair and Dunwich's fine features, was draped in black crepe. There were darker patches to either side of her, like a few paintings had been removed. Small slowed down to look at her more closely. She wasn't smiling, but there was something in her eyes—the same liquid green as Dunwich's—that made him feel calm, peaceful.

"My sister, Susan," Dunwich said quietly. He reached out and touched the painting gently. "We were very close when we were younger, but I was sent away to school, and then to college and medical school. We wrote each other often, but it wasn't the same."

"She's beautiful," Small said. Dunwich looked at him, and Small licked his lips. "She looks just like you."

"She was always stronger than I," Dunwich said. He was looking at Small's mouth now, and Small felt a faint heat creep up his spine. "But she said I made her that way. I didn't believe her, but now I wonder. If I had been here, perhaps—" He looked back at the portrait. "Perhaps I might have saved her from them."

"Saved her?" Small blinked.

"Yes." Dunwich's voice grew cold, his expression hard as he glanced at one of the dark patches to the left of his sister's portrait. "My father and uncles, and my aunt—they must have known that I would have protected her. But I didn't know." His voice got softer, touched with regret and guilt.

It was genuine, Small thought. He really believed that his sister had been their victim. Hell, she probably was. It wasn't any crazier than the stuff he'd read earlier that day. It wasn't much crazier than Zephram Allen spying on him as he woke up every morning.

"I—" Small shifted his grip on the satchel. "I'm sorry for your loss," he said finally. The look Dunwich gave him brought back the flutter in his belly. And then his stomach growled, loud enough that it made him jump. "Uh," Small said, wincing. "Sorry, I—"

Dunwich touched his elbow. "My apologies; I'd almost forgotten. Please, follow me."

They went through another large room and then into a smaller one. Small supposed it could be called a "breakfast room" or a "morning room," or something like that. It had a fairly large table made of some dark reddish wood, waxed and polished until it fairly sparkled. Small could see his reflection in it, clear as in a mirror, when he bent over to put his satchel down. Dunwich motioned for him to sit, then rang a bell standing on the sideboard behind them.

A woman as broad and colorless as the orderly at the asylum brought in a tray laden with sandwiches and small, sugar-glazed pastries. She set it down and stepped back to make way for another woman, who carried a tray with a delicate tea service on it.

"Thank you, that will be all," Dunwich said quietly. He sat down at the head of the table, to Small's right, and put a hand on the teapot. "How do you take your tea?"

"Same as my coffee," Small said. "Coupla sugars." He stacked a couple triangular sandwich wedges on his plate, then added a few more when his stomach growled again.

Dunwich seemed to understand that he wasn't going to be much for conversation until he'd eaten. Small was grateful. The sandwiches were good, and the tea wasn't too bad, either. But the view was better. Dunwich's hands were graceful, his fingers elegant, and his wrists slender but corded with sinew. Small watched as Dunwich sipped his tea, his hands curved around the cup and his lips pursed as he blew delicately across the surface to cool it. He licked a crumb from the corner of his mouth, and Small felt the muscles low in his stomach tighten.

"Uh," he said when he'd finished his third sandwich. Dunwich set down his cup.

"Would you care for—?" Dunwich asked, tilting the plate of pastries. One of them shifted and grazed his hand.

"Yeah, okay," Small said. He reached out and took the one that had touched Dunwich. Dunwich watched, his gaze intent and his lips parted, as Small took a bite. It was something lemony and sweet, with just a hint of tartness. Crumbs stuck to his bottom lip. Small wiped at them with the tip of his thumb, then licked them off.

"Ah," said Dunwich softly. He licked his own lips, then cleared his throat and adjusted his glasses. Small smiled and took another bite.

"It's really good," he said once he'd swallowed. He picked up his cup and drank. He liked Dunwich watching him as much as he liked watching Dunwich. Maybe more. It made him feel warm and kind of relaxed, but with a thread of energy—of anticipation, yeah—running through it. He leaned back in his chair and felt a yawn coming on now that he was fed and less anxious. He smothered it with some effort.

"A moment if you would, Mr. Small," Dunwich said. He stood and rang the bell. A minute later, the two women came in and cleared the table. Dunwich sat back down after they'd left.

"I looked through the Institution's older records," he said.

Small suddenly felt less relaxed. After reading Allen's account, he wasn't sure his mother had ever been a patient. He felt pretty sure she hadn't been—pretty sure none of the Arkham victims had been, just the out-of-towners who'd gone on to kill—but he still wanted to know. He leaned forward.

"I can find no record of a Caroline Small registered as a patient from 1887 to 1903," Dunwich said. "I'm sorry."

"No, that's oh-oh-kh—" The word got stuck as Small found himself seized by a jaw-cracking yawn that left his eyes watering. "Sorry," he muttered, rubbing his eyes.

"Mr. Small, are you well?" Dunwich asked. He leaned forward and touched Small's wrist lightly. "You look pale, and there are dark circles under your eyes." He wrapped his fingers around Small's wrist. "Your pulse feels slightly elevated."

Small stared at Dunwich's hand on him. "I haven't—haven't been getting much sleep," he said, a little dazed.

"I can write you a prescription for something that will help," Dunwich began. Small shuddered at the thought, and Dunwich's grip tightened.

"Hell no," Small managed. "I'm as good as robbed or murdered in my sleep if I take a powder. No," he said, "but thanks."

"'Murdered in your sleep'?" Dunwich's thumb stroked his skin softly. Small couldn't take his eyes off it.

"Yeah. At the boardinghouse. Someone's tried to get in my room nearly every night." He didn't mention names or the spying from the attic. If Dunwich knew what was going on and who was responsible, Small didn't need to say. And if he didn't know, Small didn't see the need to accuse the butler's family. It might make him sound more paranoid if he mentioned names. Maybe Dunwich would think it was another boarder.

Dunwich stroked his wrist once more, then let go. "You're welcome to stay here," he said. "It's a large house, and mostly empty. You'll sleep undisturbed by noises at your door. I can't vouch for the wind outside, though."

Small swallowed heavily. If he stayed here, he might be able to look for more information on Henry Dunwich and Zephram Allen's "god," on the cause of the Arkham madness.

If he stayed here, he'd be close to Dunwich.

"Yeah," he said. It might be a really stupid idea, but he suddenly felt reckless. He pushed his chair back and stood up. "Okay. I just gotta—"

Dunwich stood with him and picked up the bell. He rang it twice, and Willitts appeared. He gave Small a hard look before turning towards Dunwich.

"Mr. Small will be our guest for some time. He's been staying at the boardinghouse—" Dunwich glanced at Small and smiled slightly "—and I would like for you to go and collect his things. Unless you would prefer—?" He glanced at Small again.

Small shook his head. He had his notes with him. The only thing he needed in town now was to wire Grey and let him know what was going on. He probably shouldn't wait until tomorrow to do it, but he was going to.

"And have my old room made up, Willitts," Dunwich continued. Willitts' expression was impassive, but Small could see his displeasure simmering below the surface. Willitts only inclined his head and backed out of the room.

"Would you care to see the house while the room is made up and Willitts fetches your things?" Dunwich waited until Willitts was gone, then said, "Then perhaps you'd like to rest until suppertime."

Small clamped his jaw on another yawn and nodded. The more he saw of the house, the better. There were probably secret passages or hidden boltholes in the walls, places where he might find more papers like the book—or something else. Maybe some of the earlier Dunwiches had left their own accounts since the valley was settled. He picked up his satchel—"To keep it out of the way," he muttered when Dunwich looked at it inquiringly—and let Dunwich lead him out into the rest of the house.

Dunwich took him through some large rooms, saying, "The library—you're welcome to spend as much time in here as you like, the music room, the formal dining room—it's far too much for only one person, don't you think? The ballroom—" They had made it to the back of the house. Small looked out the window and saw another tree-lined lane leading to a small, ornate stone building that looked to be built right into the rock hillside behind it. The strange fog was thickest here, rising and falling in regular surges—like long, deep breaths sighing in and out from the rocks. Small took a half-step back from the window.

"The family crypt," Dunwich said. His lips thinned and his eyes darkened. Small read bitterness, guilt, and sorrow in an instant before Dunwich's expression smoothed. "Ah, this way," he said. He touched Small's arm again and led him down a long corridor and up a flight of stairs.

"These are the family's living quarters. You'll be staying here, in my old room." He opened the door to a fairly large room. It was furnished simply, with a circular table and a comfortable-looking chair. A decent-sized desk stood against the far wall, on the other side of the bed, which looked like it had just been made up. A wardrobe stood nearby, next to a chest of drawers. Small eyed the door surreptitiously. There was a bolt fitted on the inside—he could lock himself in if he wanted to. But there was also a bolt at the top of the doorframe outside, which meant he could also be locked in.

Small walked over and looked out the window. There was a narrow ledge outside it, and the fog below. He couldn't see what the ground looked like, but he was confident he could climb or jump his way down if he needed to. He turned back to Dunwich.

"The water closet is through here," Dunwich continued. He showed Small a narrow door. "And if you need anything, you can ring for a servant—there." He pointed to a brass plaque with a button set in its center, then went back into the hall. Small followed, stifling another yawn behind his fist.

"I'm staying just there," Dunwich said, pointing to a room across the hall and two doors down. It looked to be the last room in this wing. "Supper won't be until nine. If you'd like to rest until then, I'll send Willitts up with your things at eight-thirty."

"Yeah. Thanks," Small said. He went back into the room and put his satchel down by the bed. Dunwich stood in the doorway, watching him.

"Until suppertime, then," Dunwich said. He gave Small another one of his soft smiles. Small found himself smiling back a little, even after Dunwich had turned away.

Small closed the door and waited until he was sure Dunwich had gone back downstairs before sliding the bolt home, slowly and carefully and as quietly as he could. He then spent the next half hour examining the walls and ceiling carefully, going so far as to climb on the furniture to get a closer look. Then he opened all the bureau drawers, tugged on the light fixtures, and explored every inch of the wardrobe. He didn't find anything that looked like a peephole or a secret passageway. Satisfied, he ducked into the water closet to check it, then took off his shoes and sprawled across the bed.

Small was asleep in seconds, and he slept soundly and undisturbed until there was a knock at the door. Willitts stood there, sneering, with Small's suitcase in his hand. Small grinned at him and took it, then shut the door on him. He spent a few minutes tossing some of his clothes in the wardrobe and stashing the rest in a drawer, and then he opened his satchel. There was nowhere he could hide its contents in here, and he wasn't sure he wanted to. That'd be more suspicious than just leaving it out. And it wasn't like he expected Dunwich or the servants to read shorthand. Everything else he could explain easily—pretty truthfully, even. Excerpts from Allen's book would be more difficult. In the end, he just tucked it in the wardrobe with a shirt draped over it carelessly. He memorized the fall of the shirt and the pattern of wrinkles, then spent a few minutes washing up, putting on his shoes, and tidying his appearance.

He didn't take any detours on the way back to the room where they'd had tea. He stopped to look out the windows, though. The fog outside seemed to be glowing with an eldritch phosphorescence. Small craned his neck to look up at the sky, to see if the glow was a trick of the moonlight. The moon curved in a thin, faint crescent, dull and washed out. Even the few stars around it were weak and flickering.

Arkham had gotten even stranger since he'd been gone.

Small left the window and made his way down to supper. It was a quiet affair. Afterward, Dunwich invited him to the library for a drink. They sipped whiskey companionably, and Dunwich asked polite, innocuous questions about his interests. Small answered a bit uncomfortably. Outside of his job, he liked to play cards, smoke, and drink. It wasn't very interesting, and it made him sound pedestrian as hell.

"You're welcome to smoke now, if you'd like," Dunwich said. He set an ashtray down at Small's elbow, then reached into his pocket—the one he'd been touching at the Institution—and drew out a watch to check the time. It was very elegant—like Dunwich himself. Small watched as Dunwich's fingertip caressed its face. It reminded Small of the gentle stroke of his thumb along Small's wrist. He lit his cigarette and inhaled deeply, sucking heat into his lungs as warmth rose in his stomach.

"It was a gift from my sister," Dunwich said. "When I went away to college." He continued to caress the watch, but his eyes were on Small's mouth, on the hand holding the cigarette. "She was the only thing I ever missed when I was gone," he said to Small's cigarette. "The only thing I ever cared for, here or at school. I would have done anything for her," he finished softly. He closed the watch and slipped it back in his pocket. He never stopped watching Small's mouth or his hand.

Small crossed his legs. The heat from his lungs and stomach had started to trickle down lower from having Dunwich's eyes on him like that.

"Do you have any business in town tomorrow?" Dunwich asked after a moment. He hadn't looked away from Small once.

"Yeah, I have to send a wire back to Chicago. That's all, though."

"I can take you there in the motorcar. It's much faster than walking," Dunwich offered. "The last patients left the Institution this morning, so I haven't many responsibilities left."

"You're closing the Institution?"

"For now." Dunwich touched his pocket, and he frowned. The green of his eyes grew sharper as he focused on something over Small's shoulder. "Many of my father's methods were outdated, and I have no intention of carrying on his work. I was never interested in it to begin with. With my sister gone—" He made a vague gesture, and his eyes softened as he looked at Small again.

Small cleared his throat and stubbed out his cigarette. No intention of carrying on his father's work—it could have meant anything. It could have meant nothing. He shifted in his chair, still feeling the warmth of Dunwich's gaze on him.

"It's getting late," Dunwich said after a moment of silence. Small got up, and Dunwich rose with him. He followed Dunwich up the stairs and to his door, but he didn't reach for the knob immediately. Instead, he stood there, waiting, facing Dunwich. The space between them felt charged, like air just before a lightning strike.

The hairs on his arms lifted when Dunwich leaned forward, hand stretching out to touch the doorknob. He leaned closer, close enough that Small could feel his warm breath on his lips. Small opened his mouth a little to breathe him in, and he leaned forward, too.

The kiss was soft, the curl of Dunwich's tongue slick and sweet. Small reached for Dunwich's waist and pulled him closer, and Dunwich touched the scars under his eye. His fingers slid into Small's hair as he crowded against him, backing him against the door. Small twisted to the side just enough to get his knee between Dunwich's legs.

"Ah!" Small swallowed Dunwich's gasp, drinking in his whiskey-hot breath. Dunwich's fingernails bit into his scalp, and Small shuddered as he felt the jolt travel all the way down to his cock. Even if it went no further, this was already a thousand times better than furtive, anonymous gropings in steam-filled bath houses and dim, smoky gentlemen's clubs. Dunwich bit his lip gently, and Small groaned. He groaned again when Dunwich shifted against him and something hot and hard dug into his hip.

A door closed loudly somewhere down the corridor, and they stumbled apart, panting. Small could barely make out footsteps heading their way over the sounds of their breaths. He closed his eyes in frustration briefly, then looked at Dunwich. Dunwich's cheeks were flushed, and his eyes were luminous and shimmering behind the glasses. His lips were wet. Small was sure he must look the same.

He reached back and twisted the doorknob. The door swung open slowly.

"Goodnight," Dunwich said. Small wanted to bang his head against the jamb.

"'Night," he said. He stepped back, into his room. Dunwich watched him for a moment, then turned away.

"Willitts," he began, and Small closed the door. He slid the bolt quietly and began taking off his clothes. The lamps had been lit while he'd been at dinner, and the light flickered, warm and yellow. Shadows chased each other as he tossed his jacket, shirt, and vest in the direction of the wardrobe. His pants followed suit. He was still flushed and his cock was still hard.

Small sat down on the bed. The fabric of his drawers rubbed against him, and it made his thighs twitch. He reached down and rubbed himself through the cloth, imagining it was Dunwich's hand touching him. That thought sent a hot, fizzing stab through him, and he slipped his hand inside his drawers to touch his aching, feverish skin. He dragged his fingers through the moisture at the head of his cock and began to thrust into his fist, panting at the feel of it. He thought about Dunwich's eyes, his hands, his slender fingers, and the way Dunwich had looked at him. He thought about the way Dunwich had kissed him and pressed against him, and he threw his head back and grunted, shuddering as he came.

Small flopped onto his back, breathing hard. He stared at the ceiling until he started to feel sticky and clammy, and then he got up and peeled off his drawers. He used them to wipe himself off and stood there, holding them, as he surveyed the room. He should probably pick up his clothes and hang them in the wardrobe. And he should probably check on his stuff. Small chucked the soiled drawers into the far corner of the wardrobe and pulled out his robe. He was a little chilled now that he wasn't flushed and panting over Dunwich anymore.

It looked like the shirt over his satchel hadn't been disturbed, but it was hard to tell in the lamplight. He'd check again in the morning. Small hung up the rest of his clothes and went around extinguishing all of the lights but one. He left that one burning until he'd crawled between the sheets.

~*~

  
The wind blowing over the corners of Dunwich House made a mournful moaning sound that echoed in his dreams and woke him up. Small blinked in the faint green light. It was just enough to make out vague outlines—like the light of the crescent moon. He sat up and listened. As the wind rose and fell, moaning softer and louder and then softer again, he heard it: quiet footsteps outside his door, and then a sigh. Small reached down and picked up his robe where it lay pooled on the floor. He put it on as he went to the door. The bolt didn't make much noise when he unlocked it.

Standing there in a long nightshirt, his skin pale in the wan light, was Dunwich. His eyes were wide and dark and unfocused. He turned his head at the sound of Small's door, but Small didn't think Dunwich was really seeing him.

"Can you hear her?" Dunwich whispered. He took a step forward and reached out his hand. "I hear her all the time—sleeping, dreaming, in the wind—I can't shut it out." He smiled a terrible smile, one that trembled at the corners. His fingers shook, and then his whole body shivered.

Small went out into the hall and put a hand on his shoulder. "Hey, Dunwich?" he said softly. "Hey. Why don't you come in here and sit down?" He steered Dunwich into his room and pushed him over to the bed. Dunwich sat there shivering as Small closed the door and found some matches. He lit the lamp on the bedside table and was just blowing out the match when he heard Dunwich gasp.

Small turned. Dunwich was still shivering, but his eyes no longer had that unfocused look. He looked up at Small.

"I found you in the hall," Small said easily.

"I see," Dunwich said. "Forgive me; I had promised you wouldn't be disturbed by noises at your door."

Small sat down on the bed next to him. "I wasn't. The wind woke me up." He gave Dunwich half a smile. "You didn't make any promises about that," he reminded him.

"Ah. That's true," Dunwich said. He was shivering a little less now. He glanced down, and his fingers curled in the fabric of his nightshirt. It rode up, exposing a few more inches of his legs, slender and taut with muscle. Small found it difficult to look away until Dunwich cleared his throat.

Dunwich hadn't caught Small staring at his legs. He was too busy staring at Small's thigh, clearly visible where his robe had fallen to the side. Dunwich's lips parted, and his hand twitched like he wanted to reach over and touch.

Small scooted closer, his robe falling open the rest of the way and leaving him almost completely bare below the waist. Dunwich inhaled sharply, and Small felt him quiver where their legs touched.

"Still cold?" He put a hand on Dunwich's arm.

"No," Dunwich sighed, and ran his fingers up Small's thigh. Small groaned and spread his legs a little. He let go of Dunwich's arm to gather a fistful of nightshirt and tug upward. It got stuck under Dunwich's ass.

"You gotta—" He groaned as Dunwich palmed his balls. "You gotta stand up a minute," he panted, shifting his weight to his feet. Dunwich stood up with him, and Small yanked the nightshirt over his head. All of Dunwich was slender and taut with muscle, the individual ridges and cords defined by shadows that jumped and quivered with his breaths and the glimmering lamplight.

"Yeah, that's good," Small said. He shrugged off his robe and pulled Dunwich by the arm until they were standing against one another. Small's cock, hot and aching, rubbed against Dunwich's hip, and he could feel Dunwich's cock hard against his own skin. Dunwich moaned against Small's throat, mouth wet and open, and Small let his hands slide over Dunwich's ass, kneading gently as he and Dunwich thrust against each other.

Dunwich kissed him, hungry and desperate, licking into him and breathing him in. It made Small dizzy. He shuffled backward until his legs hit the bed, then sat down. He pulled Dunwich with him, guiding him so Dunwich straddled his lap, and ran his hand up Dunwich's sweaty spine, then back down again. Dunwich shuddered and rolled his hips forward, bringing their erections together, and Small bit back a groan. He wanted Dunwich's hand on him. He wanted Dunwich's fingers wrapped around him, stroking him, touching him—

Small took Dunwich's hand and pushed it down between them, shaping it around their cocks. Panting, he let his head fall forward against Dunwich's shoulder, watching his fingers move up and down—slowly at first, then gradually getting faster. He gripped Dunwich's hip tightly, nails digging in to hold on to sweat-slick skin, and brought his other hand up to Dunwich's face. Dunwich turned in to the touch, mouthing Small's fingers and licking them, sucking them and biting down. When they were slippery with saliva, Dunwich drew Small's hand down until Small's fingertips rested in the cleft of his ass. His back arched as Small pushed a finger inside him, and a cry hitched in his throat. Small pushed the finger deeper inside, and Dunwich made the noise again. His eyes were dark now, the green all but swallowed by black, and his hand was tight around their cocks, moving rapidly. Small felt a buzzing heat gathering at the base of his spine as he pushed his finger in and out, and then Dunwich's muscles clenched as he came, his cock hot and slick and jerking against Small's. Small thrust into Dunwich's palm, seeking a little more friction, and the buzzing heat rushed through him and over him, leaving him gasping and shaking.

It was almost too much effort to get under the blankets after all that, but somehow Small managed to get them pulled down and tuck them both in.

"I'm afraid I don't sleep very well," Dunwich said. "I may disturb you." His voice sounded vulnerable and rough with fatigue.

"Yeah? 'Sokay. I don't sleep very well in Arkham, either," Small answered. He blew out the lamp and rolled over, listening to Dunwich's soft breaths get slower and steadier. And somewhere, between one breath and the next, he fell asleep.

~*~

  
Small was alone in the room when he woke up. The pillow next to his had been plumped and smoothed carefully, and Small grinned when he thought about Dunwich fluffing it and pulling the pillowcase taut so the wrinkles disappeared.

Wrinkles. Small got up reluctantly, yanked the blankets into some semblance of order, and went to check his satchel. The shirt looked as artfully disarranged this morning as it had been the previous afternoon. If someone had been into his things, they'd covered their tracks well.

He was dressed and downstairs within half an hour. Dunwich was looking pale and maybe a little tired—but very handsome—in a dark suit. He smiled and dabbed the corner of his mouth with a napkin as Small entered the room.

"G'morning," Small said, smiling. Something light and cheerful bubbled up inside him. It felt weird and unexpected, out of place. But it felt good, too.

"Good morning. I trust you slept well?"

"Yeah, real well. You?" Small helped himself to some breakfast, but it was the coffee—and Dunwich—he was interested in.

"Yes, thank you," Dunwich said politely. He folded his napkin and set it aside, then sat quietly, apparently content to watch Small eat. Small licked his lips and fingers more than was strictly necessary, but Dunwich didn't seem to mind, not if the way his eyes got more focused and his breathing got a bit faster was any indication.

Breakfast out of the way, Dunwich led Small outside. Willitts had brought the motorcar around. He stood at the driver's side door, holding it open for Dunwich. A ripple of malice washed across his face as he looked at them, then disappeared in an instant. Small felt the hostility like a nagging itch between his shoulder blades for most of the drive into town. It only started to fade when Dunwich put a hand on Small's knee and squeezed. Small's mouth went dry, and he retaliated by putting his hand on Dunwich's thigh and sliding it higher, until Dunwich hit a nasty bump in the road. Small kept his hands to himself after that.

Dunwich let Small off in front of the post office. He'd offered to wait while Small conducted his business, or to pick him up later, but Small had declined. Walking back was probably the best opportunity he'd have to poke around the house's grounds undisturbed. He wanted a look inside, too, in the attics if he could swing it. He'd have to avoid Willitts, though. Willitts was suspicious of him, and Small had a feeling it went deeper than normal small-town distrust. Deeper than normal Arkham distrust, even. It made him wonder what Willitts knew about what went on in Arkham, or if Willitts suspected him of something..

His telegram to Grey dispatched, Small was free to wander Arkham's streets. He wanted to get started on his survey of Dunwich House's grounds, though, so he took a slightly different route out of town, avoiding the main road and heading for Chapman's Brook obliquely. He felt a bit stupid using a cloak-and-dagger tactic, but he was sure there were eyes on him in town as much as there had been at the boardinghouse. And he was expecting to start feeling them at Dunwich House, too.

The feeling of being watched lessened as he got further away from the town. The air in the trees between town and Chapman's Brook was still and heavy, the silence broken only by the occasional birdcall and his own breaths as he exhaled cigarette smoke. The air grew heavier when he crossed the bridge, scraping at his throat and lungs as he got closer to the valley's rocky border. By the time he reached the house's grounds and the leading edge of what he was starting to think of as the Dunwich fog, he was strangely tired. The air had turned soupy. It clung wetly to his mouth and nose, like it knew what he wanted to do and was trying to hold him back. Lighting another cigarette and inhaling the hot, dry smoke helped him feel like he could breathe, but he hadn't put more than a dozen cigarettes in his pocket this morning.

Small made it as far as the tree-lined lane that led to the crypt before he began to consider conceding defeat. His head was pounding, and a tight, thrumming thread of anxiety had twisted itself around his chest. It grew worse when he got up close to the trees that stood along the lane to the crypt. Their bark was pitted and gnarled, glistening like wet, cracked leather or the hide of some ancient, swamp-dwelling reptile, and it gave off a scent of decay. The branches above creaked and crackled, reaching for him even though there was no wind to move them. Small felt his heart leap into his throat as a twig caught his hair. He broke it off and swore as the tree dripped sap on his hand. The viscous liquid burned like ice, and the smell of it stung his eyes and nose like strong vinegar. What the hell was going on?

He moved away from the trees and headed for the crypt well outside their reach. The trees groaned and popped and snapped as he passed by them, the sounds rising in pitch and making the pounding in his head grow sharper. Small gritted his teeth and ignored them to take the last few steps to the crypt.

It was a vision of ornate masonry, covered in sinuous carvings that writhed dizzyingly in Small's peripheral vision. He put a hand on the door to steady himself. The door was made of a thick, sturdy wood crossed by iron bands and securely locked. Flowers and garlands in various stages of decay were piled up against it, adding to the already miasmic smell of the mist around him. Small coughed, then gagged.

He made his way back around to the front of the house. His dizziness and the breathlessness from anxiety and the thick air lessened as he got further from the crypt, and his mind started to clear. He looked over his shoulder at the trees. They stood there, tall and dark and silent. Not so much as a leaf stirred. Small shuddered and scrubbed his hand over his face, then made a noise of disgust. His hand still had some sap on it, and the smell still made his eyes water. The skin around it had turned an angry red, too. Small touched his hand gingerly. The skin was hot and tight, like it had been burned.

Willitts glared at him, sneering, when he opened the door. Small brushed past him, his head fuzzy and his hand aching. He was dog tired. Damn it, he was in no mood to deal with someone whose best expression of contempt didn't hold a candle to Grey's. He ignored the weight of Willitts' gaze as he made his way to the stairs. Once in his room, he rinsed his hand carefully. The red mark had begun to rise into a sizable welt, and the water, rather than soothing it, made it tingle and burn painfully. He wrapped a clean handkerchief around his hand, more to remind himself that touching it wouldn't be pleasant than anything else, and then bolted his door.

His notes on Dunwich and Allen's discovery of the "dark god" didn't make particular mention of the god's breath being like the Dunwich fog, but Small figured it wasn't too much of a leap. He hadn't written down anything about the trees or plants burning skin with their sap, though—probably because Allen hadn't said anything about it. Small tore a page from the scrapbook and started making a list, jotting down the items in his sprawling shorthand. He knew that Dunwich had been studying medicine before he'd been called home to deal with the deaths in his family. If he were a betting man—and he was—he'd wager that Dunwich had plenty of medical books in the library downstairs. He might even find some books on natural history in either the Dunwich or Arkham libraries. Finding anything on a mineral that leached into the water and made it taste bitter and cold, something that would make oaks' sap burn the skin, or a gas or plant or germ that caused the fear and delusions he'd experienced near the crypt—it could lead him to the truth about what happened to the people in Arkham. And what he couldn't find in this house or the tiny library in town, maybe Grey could track down for him in Chicago. Grey would complain and threaten, but he'd do it. Small was on to something here—he could feel it. His own brief experience this afternoon had proven that there _was_ something in Arkham, something dangerous, that was responsible for its citizens' misfortunes.

He tucked his list into his pocket and stashed the satchel back in the wardrobe, then went down to the library, where he found a book on toxic and medicinal plants almost immediately. He settled down in a comfortable chair and began reading.

By the time Dunwich appeared to call him to supper, Small had read a few chapters about poisonous mushrooms. One or two looked like promising candidates, causing hallucinations that ranged from merely disturbing to violent. Small marked the pages and left the book on the chair. It was as good a place to start as any, even if his miasmic theory made a little more sense. He'd take the book with him tomorrow and look for the fungi—assuming he'd be able to see anything at all in the mist.

Supper was quiet, and despite being hungry, Small didn't feel much like eating. His head still buzzed faintly from earlier, and his throat still felt tender. Dunwich seemed distracted, too, though he noticed the handkerchief around Small's hand immediately. He offered to look at it at once, but Small shrugged.

"It's fine. Doesn't really hurt much."

"Still, it could be serious," Dunwich said with a note of disapproval in his voice. "I'll have a look after supper."

"Uh, I was kind of planning on going to bed right after," Small said. He had a lot to think about, and he wasn't sure if Dunwich would be interested in another night like last night. He hoped so, but Dunwich looked as tired as Small felt.

Dunwich folded his napkin with careful precision, then set it beside his plate with equal care. He held Small's gaze as he said, "Oh? It won't take but a moment."

"Oh. Okay, yeah," Small said. His head was still buzzing, but this time it was because of the way Dunwich was looking at him. Maybe he wasn't that tired after all. He speared his last bite of potato with his fork and chewed. Yeah, he wasn't that hungry. And he definitely wasn't that tired.

"Now's good," he said, and stood up as Dunwich rang for the dishes to be cleared.

Small was sitting on his bed, handkerchief, shoes, jacket, and vest off and shirt unbuttoned, when Dunwich entered carrying a black bag. He shut the door behind him and stood in front of Small. Small held out his hand.

Dunwich's touch was tender. He traced the edges of the welt with his fingertip, and Small gasped as a line of electricity raced down his back and to his cock.

"I'm sorry," Dunwich said immediately. "Did that hurt?"

"N-no." Small gasped again as Dunwich ran his finger over the welt. And then he groaned, eyes closing as Dunwich ran his tongue over it and blew a cool breath over the wetness. Dunwich laved the welt gently with languid strokes of his tongue until Small was panting. Small opened his eyes when Dunwich spread a cooling salve over his hand, and he began fumbling with the buttons on Dunwich's vest and shirt as his hand was bandaged.

Dunwich ran his finger over the bandage, then followed the lines of the scars under Small's eye with first his fingertip, his touch like gentle kisses, and then his lips. The warmth that bloomed under his caresses chased away the last, lingering effects of Small's anxiety and fatigue. Small shuddered and wrenched Dunwich's vest open, tearing off a couple buttons. Dunwich shrugged out of the vest and his shirt, then pushed Small's shirt down and let his fingers trail along the thick scar from the woodshed. His tongue was soft on Small's shoulder, and Small sucked in a shaking breath. He pulled Dunwich up and kissed him, tasting the salt of his own sweat on Dunwich's lips.

Dunwich pulled away. He reached out and stroked Small's hair. He took Small's un-bandaged hand in his and ran his fingers across Small's palm. Small kept his hand open, the throbbing in his cock growing almost painful as Dunwich opened a bottle and poured an unguent over his fingers.

"I want to feel you inside me," he said. His eyes shimmered in the lamplight.

Dunwich opened easily to the slick pressure of Small's fingers. His arms and legs trembled as he rocked backward. "More," he begged with broken gasps, head hanging down. His muscles clenched around Small's cock as he slid inside him. Small couldn't move; he could only pant and grunt softly when the thrust of Dunwich's hips pushed him deeper.

"Please," Dunwich sighed. "Please—ah!"

Small stopped breathing for a second as the prickling throb in his groin threatened to overwhelm him, and then he pushed into it, snapping his hips forward until Dunwich cried out in release and he was swept up in the ecstasy of his own orgasm.

Small pulled out slowly. He stretched forward, falling to the side, his body relaxing as the sweat began to cool on his skin. Dunwich lay on his stomach beside him, breathing deeply. Small knew he should get up, should make some effort to clean up and blow out the lamps, but he couldn't muster the strength. He let his eyes fall closed, and he surrendered himself to the dark.

~*~

  
He slept deeply, undisturbed and uncaring, until something invaded his dreamless slumber and jolted him awake. Heart hammering, Small woke to horrified laughter, the sound of it shrill and uncontrolled. It sent a frisson of alarm through him, and he rolled over. Dunwich was gone. Small leapt off the bed and yanked on his pants. The lamps were still burning, and he could see that Dunwich's shirt, pants, and shoes were missing, though his glasses were still on the bedside table. He threw the door open and raced into the dark hallway.

Dunwich was slumped against the door at the end of the hall, a hand over his mouth and his eyes wide with horror. His hair and clothes were damp and smudged with slime and muck, unwholesome in its color and stench. Small swallowed heavily as he recognized it—it was whatever gave the Dunwich fog its foul smell. He bent down and gripped Dunwich's wrist, pulling his hand away from his mouth.

"Dunwich! Hey—Dunwich!" He gave him a shake, and Dunwich laughed again—choked, whooping gasps of laughter that shook his whole body. His breath smelled sour, of bile and decay.

"It must have been a dream," he said faintly. "A—a frightful nightmare." He laughed wildly, but tears gathered in the corners of his eyes. Small shook him again, so hard that Dunwich's head knocked against the wall. Dunwich closed his eyes and gripped Small's arm. His nails cut into Small's bicep, but Small didn't care. He knelt down next to him and touched his shoulder.

"I dreamed—Susan." Dunwich looked at Small, his eyes fever-bright. "I heard her calling me. She's called for me every night since I came back—since the funerals." He shivered, and Small squeezed his shoulder.

"It's okay," he said. He tried to keep the apprehension out of his voice.

"She begged me to come home—to save her. I tried to tell her she was already dead, but she wouldn't listen. She wouldn't listen!" Dunwich turned his face away and closed his eyes tightly. "She was begging me to come. What else could I do?"

"Nothing," Small said. He squeezed Dunwich's shoulder again.

"She was waiting for me," Dunwich whispered. He was trembling under Small's hand.

"Waiting for you?"

"In the crypt, in the dress she was buried in. She was so pale, so cold. She held out her arms and begged me to kiss her." Dunwich covered his eyes and let go of Small's arm. He pressed his fist against his stomach. "Her tongue was rotting in her mouth. I—I could feel it, sliding between my lips, slick with grave slime and cold, clotted blood. Something squirmed, and I—I swallowed—" He retched, coughing, and then hid his face in his hands, shuddering from the cold and his horribly silent, gasping laughter.

Small stood up and went back into his room. He pressed the button to summon a servant and snatched the coverlet from his bed, and then went back into the hall, where Dunwich still shook. He draped the coverlet over Dunwich and sat down next to him, waiting.

Willitts appeared in his nightshirt and robe after a few minutes, just when Small was ready to push the button again or go storming into the servants' quarters—to hell with the fact that he didn't know where they were.

"Hot water," Small said. "Get the bath filled. Now." He didn't like the way Willitts was looking at Dunwich. There was an avid, watchful gleam in his eyes. He almost seemed pleased by the state Dunwich was in.

"At once," Willitts said. "If you'll follow me." Small caught a hint of excitement under the false servility. It made him want to punch the permanent sneer off the bastard's face and leave him bleeding on the ground. Instead, he ground his teeth.

He reached down and hooked Dunwich under the arms, heaving him up. Dunwich stood slowly, legs trembling as he leaned against him. At least he wasn't laughing anymore. Small rearranged the coverlet so it wouldn't drag on the ground or trip him up, and led him down the hall after Willitts.

It took a while for the water to heat, but by the time the bath was ready, Dunwich had stopped shivering and some color had returned to his face. He still looked like he'd had a terrible shock and he wasn't steady on his feet, but he seemed less like the frightened, hysterical creature Small had found cowering in the hall and more like himself. Willitts took off his robe and was rolling up his sleeve when Small stopped him.

"I'll take care of him," he said. He didn't miss the malicious humor that flashed across Willitts' face when he spoke. The rat-bastard. "Bring his nightshirt and robe, and I'll do the rest."

"Of course," Willitts said. Small turned his back on him even though it made him itch uncomfortably between his shoulder blades, and started undressing Dunwich. Dunwich helped him, though he had some trouble with the buttons. His fingers were icy cold, clumsy and fumbling. Small tossed the foul-smelling clothes aside and pushed Dunwich over to the tub. Dunwich got in slowly, hissing at the heat. The steam rose around him, and the water slowly turned his skin a healthy pink. Small held out a bar of soap and a flannel, and Dunwich took them almost tentatively.

"I can scrub your back for you, if you'd like," Small said.

Dunwich laughed hollowly, and Small winced.

"I'm sorry," Dunwich said. He worked up a lather and began scrubbing his face and arms, his chest and legs. "What you must think of me."

"I don't think anything except this place is no good for anybody," Small said. "For my mother and father, for your sister, for too many people to name—for you. And for me." He waited for Dunwich to finish soaping his hair. "Close your eyes and lean forward. Like that, yeah." He tipped a pitcher of warm water over Dunwich's head to rinse the soap from it. "Okay, now stand up." He held a hand out in case Dunwich slipped, but he seemed a lot steadier now. Small tipped another pitcher of warm water over him, sluicing the soap away as he poured water over Dunwich's chest and back, and down his arms and legs. The water ran clear and clean over his pink skin, little rivulets trickling down his neck and over the planes of his chest and stomach, and dripping from the softness of his cock and balls. Small handed him a towel, and Dunwich wrapped himself in it. He stepped out of the bath.

Small looked around, wondering where Willitts was. And then he saw the robe, nightshirt, and slippers on a stool by the door. Small grimaced. He hated the thought that Willitts had come and gone without him hearing or seeing him. He'd let his guard down.

"Here," he said, holding out the nightshirt. Dunwich had already hung the towel neatly. He took the nightshirt with a soft "thank you" and pulled it on.

"I'll go find another blanket for my bed, if that's okay," Small said.

Dunwich glanced down at the slime-smudged blanket on the floor near the tub. "Ah. Yes. Please take the one from my bed."

"Yeah, all right." Small went back down the hall to Dunwich's room. It was dark, but Small could make out the dim shape of a vanity across from the window. Susan's room. His sister's room. The room still had a faintly sweet, floral smell that mixed with Dunwich's clean scent. Small tried not to breathe in too deeply. For some reason, the combined smells made him feel a little strange. He grabbed a fistful of blanket and pulled, not caring much that the pillows were knocked askew or that the sheet dragged on the floor. He went back into his room and spread the blanket over his own sheet as Dunwich walked in.

"Okay?" Small asked. Dunwich nodded, his face a smooth mask. Small turned down the covers, then threw the bolt on the door. Dunwich said nothing. He folded his robe neatly and draped it over the chair, and then he got in the bed. Small let his pants fall where he stood. He grinned a little at the faint line that appeared between Dunwich's eyes, though he didn't think Dunwich could see it very well from where he sat. He blew out the light and slid in beside Dunwich. Dunwich sighed, his breath sweet now. For a second, Small thought he caught a whiff of the fog-stench, but then it was gone, replaced by the odor of tooth-powder.

Small scooted down and lay back, head turned to watch as Dunwich did the same. Dunwich rolled over, his back to Small. Small could feel the tension in his shoulders through the air. He put his hand on Dunwich's hip, a cautious touch, then wrapped his arm around his waist and pressed himself up against Dunwich's back. He inhaled the scent of Dunwich's hair and skin, and smiled against the back of his neck when he felt Dunwich begin to relax. A swift pulse beat under the palm of Small's hand where it rested against Dunwich's stomach, and it was with that rhythm to lull him that he fell asleep.

Small slept soundly the rest of that night and, surprised, woke to find himself still curled around a warm body. Dunwich looked pale in the wan morning light, his mouth slack and bruise-dark circles under his eyes. Small was careful not to wake him as he got up and stumbled to the water closet to take a piss. Dunwich was awake when he got back, though. He sat at the edge of the bed, blinking tiredly behind his glasses. The smile he gave Small was polite and a little distant, but Small wouldn't let himself be bothered by it. He got dressed and waited for Dunwich to do the same, then followed him downstairs for some breakfast. Dunwich ate very little. He kept pressing his hand to his midsection and wincing, and he excused himself before Small was done, saying he had to retrieve some papers from the Institution—would Small like a ride into town? Small shook his head.

He spent the morning and the better part of the afternoon finishing up his reading on poisonous, hallucinogenic fungi, breaking once for coffee and a sandwich. He'd found a round dozen suspects to search the wooded areas and rocky hillsides for. He didn't think he'd go looking for them today, though. He was still tired from yesterday, and his hand, while it felt better, still burned and itched when he thought about it.

Dunwich returned that afternoon as the wind was beginning to rise, a little more color in his cheeks. He joined Small in the library, hidden behind a stack of thick books that had long titles with words like _physiognomy_ and _praecepta_ and _pathology_ in them.

"A little light reading?" Small joked from behind his book on rare minerals.

"Mm, yes," Dunwich said. "I missed exams when I had to come back to Arkham and take over the family responsibilities." The was only a trace of bitterness in his words. "I'll take them next term, but I can't fall behind." He went back to his anatomy book, and Small went back to his minerals. They continued on in a mostly companionable, hardly strained silence until after suppertime, and then Dunwich offered to have another look at Small's hand. He seemed warmer after they'd eaten—more the man Small was coming to know. He wasn't holding himself quite as aloof as he had since the night before. Small agreed and let himself be led up to the bedroom.

"It will scar," Dunwich said when he had the bandage off. He ran his thumb down the mark, and the muscles in Small's thighs and stomach tightened as he remembered the damp heat of Dunwich's tongue on the hypersensitive skin.

"I don't mind," Small said. He watched Dunwich's salve-smeared fingertip glide over the welt.

"Neither do I," Dunwich replied as he re-bandaged Small's hand. He kissed Small like he was drowning, grasping his waist with an almost terrified grip, like Small was his salvation. Or maybe like Small was lost, and Dunwich had found him. Small wasn't sure, but he wasn't going to complain about the way Dunwich panted and trembled beneath him.

Afterward, when Dunwich was breathing slowly and regularly, Small put his hand on Dunwich's belly, feeling it rise and fall in time with his breaths, the rhythm a soothing counterpoint to the howling wind outside. The muscles under Small's fingers suddenly fluttered and twitched, twisting strangely. Dunwich's face spasmed and his limbs jerked once, and then he relaxed and resumed his slow, regular breathing once more.

Small watched him for what seemed like hours, but it didn't happen again.

The next few days were much the same. Dunwich was polite but reserved, a little paler and thinner every day. Small occasionally caught Dunwich staring at him with the look of regret and hopelessness he'd seen before. It was always fleeting enough that Small sometimes doubted it had ever been there. He saw the look of desperate hunger more often, though that, too, was fleeting. Dunwich drove Small into town, where Small sent Grey a wire asking if Grey could find some books on noxious vapors or rare minerals and have them sent to Arkham. He went looking for mushrooms in the woods around Dunwich House and the Institution, and even among the rocks of the stony hillside that defined the north side of the valley. He only found edible varieties. They tasted bitter and strange—of corroded metal, queer minerals, and blight—but that was all.

He found nothing of use at the Arkham library, and when he got an answer from Grey, all the telegram said was, "Idiot." But there was no "no" before the "idiot." Small knew he'd get the information if Grey—or Bridges, more likely—could find it. So Small waited, and in the meantime, he continued reading everything that seemed even vaguely relevant in Dunwich's library.

The nights were different. Dunwich slept uncomfortably one night, then was so still Small was thought he was dead the next. And then there was the night Small woke up to find Dunwich watching him, his hand resting on Small's throat. Small lifted Dunwich's hand to his lips and licked his fingers. Dunwich's hands curled in Small's hair and his tongue curled in Small's mouth, and after that, sweaty and exhausted, they both slept undisturbed.

~*~

  
Two days later, at breakfast, Dunwich was wholly changed. He smiled distantly at Small and laughed to himself, the peals ragged and shrill. Small felt his heart contract painfully. Dread crept up and lodged itself in his throat, and he pushed his toast away.

Dunwich apologized, saying, "I'm afraid I haven't quite been myself," and then excused himself to the library.

Small went after him and cornered him in the hall.

"You should leave. Now. You're not going to reopen the Institution; there's nothing here for you. Something in Arkham is making you sick, the way it makes everyone sick—the way it did to my mother and your sister. I've felt it, too. Go back to medical school. Come to Chicago with me for a few weeks until it's time to take your exams. Just—just get out." He gripped Dunwich's forearm and felt his muscles quiver.

"What happened to your mother," Dunwich said carefully, "isn't the same as what happened to my sister. But I—" He swallowed, and Small read the hopelessness in his eyes before he willed it away. "You're right. I can't stay here any longer." He continued down the hall, hand on the wall to steady himself.

Small stood there and watched him go. He'd only been in Arkham for two weeks, but it felt like a lifetime. He didn't think he had anything else to gain by staying, and there was plenty to lose if he didn't leave. He had the beginnings of solid research to follow, and he knew it would lead him to the answers he needed—he could feel it in his bones, with the instincts that had always led him to a good story. But he wouldn't find anything if he stayed here. He'd only start losing himself.

A dark shape suddenly loomed in front of him, and Small went still. It was Willitts. He smirked at Small and said, scathingly, "Mr. Dunwich will never leave Arkham. He's the last of his family, thanks to his damned sister. But it doesn't matter. He's taken her place, and the time is at hand!"

Small pushed past Willits. Crazy, creepy bastard. He wiped his palm on his jacket in disgust—he felt dirty just touching the man's shoulder. He turned the corner and almost ran into Dunwich.

"Are you all right?"

Dunwich was backed against the wall, utterly bloodless. He bent forward, hand pressed against his stomach. Small took him by the shoulder.

"Hey. You've gotta leave, okay?" He felt Dunwich go stiff as Willitts passed by. Dunwich watched him go, lips trembling.

"You're right," he said faintly when Willitts was out of sight. "I just have a few things to put in order. Tomorrow, or the day after."

Small kept a close eye on Dunwich for the rest of the day. Dunwich seemed to welcome Small's close attention and made a show of getting his things in order, having his trunk brought out so he could fill it with clothes and the books he needed to take back to the university, collecting papers, and making a list of important documents he needed to retrieve from the Institution. He sent Willitts on that errand late in the afternoon. Willitts bared his teeth at Dunwich in a perfect Arkham parody of a smile as he left, and Small breathed a little easier to see him gone.

The light outside was dying, the feeble rays of the afternoon sun no match for the rising fog. It piled against the lowest windows, covering them at the height of a man's chest, and undulated, leaving strange, greasy smudges on the glass. It made Small's skin creep, worse than when he'd been in the fog under the trees by the crypt. He couldn't wait to get out of Arkham—out of Pennsylvania entirely.

"Would you care for a drink?"

Small jumped a little. He hadn't seen Dunwich standing at his shoulder; he'd been too busy watching the fog flow and surge against the windows like some foul, living creature come up from the depths of a primordial swamp.

"Yeah. Yeah, a drink would be—thanks," he said. Dunwich flashed him a smile that didn't fully reach his eyes, but at least it wasn't the distant caricature he'd turned on Small that morning. Small took the glass of whiskey from him, feeling wetness under his fingertips. A few drops of whiskey had rolled down the outside of his glass. Small looked at Dunwich more closely. His hands were shaking slightly; he must have spilled a little. It was uncharacteristically clumsy of him, and Small was relieved anew that Dunwich had decided to leave. He'd leave tomorrow, if Small had anything to say about it. Dunwich moved to sit down, and Small followed him.

Small drank his whiskey. Dunwich hardly touched his, absorbed as he was in watching Small drink. There was an almost calculated anticipation in his eyes, far different from the focused, intent gaze Dunwich had turned on him from the very beginning. It started to make Small a little uncomfortable.

"Wha—" he began, then frowned at the awkwardness of his tongue. His lips and fingers felt strangely numb. Small blinked his eyes, the movement slow and ponderous. Dunwich seemed to be ringed by a blurry halo as he leaned forward, then knelt beside Small's chair.

"I'm sorry," Dunwich said. He touched Small's cheek, his thumb brushing over Small's scars. The glass fell from Small's nerveless fingers.

"I've pretended that it didn't matter, that it wasn't real, my whole life. But it wasn't a dream. They put it inside her, but she wouldn't—she tried to kill it by killing herself, to protect me by killing them so they couldn't—" Dunwich choked on a breathless, wounded laugh. "But it wasn't enough. It's still alive," he said. "It's inside me, growing. Soon it will be strong enough without a host. It will rise and smother the world with its monstrous horror and feed off our fear and insanity, the way it's fed on Arkham for the last two hundred years, until it was strong enough to make its form corporeal. And I never cared. As long as she was safe—as long as none of it touched her—it meant nothing to me. The madness and suffering of your mother—of all the rest who—

 _"I did nothing."_

The edges of Small's vision were starting to go dark. He tried to speak, but his body wouldn't obey him. Dunwich rested his trembling hand on Small's cheek.

"I've been selfish my whole life, as guilty as my father and uncles and aunt. I stayed silent and let it prey on the rest of you as long as she was untouched. And then they gave her to it. I would have killed them for what they did to her, if she hadn't already done it to stop them. But it didn't matter. It still lived. And I think it might have gone on living, if you hadn't come here." He touched Small's lips, then stroked his hair, the dark red strands slipping through his fingers.

"But you reminded me—you've made me see the blood on my hands." Dunwich stood up and bent over him. Small felt the pressure of Dunwich's mouth, strangely cool, on his. He tasted whiskey and something rotten on Dunwich's breath, and then everything faded into a soft, buzzing blackness.

He floated there for an indeterminate amount of time. His only consolation, poor as it was, was that the blackness wasn't absolute. He could hear shouting in it, and screams. Glass broke, and he heard a ragged, strangled moan coming from far off.

Small opened his eyes. His eyelids were still heavy, and his bones felt like they were filled with lead. He groaned and sat up slowly, tongue dry and sticking to the roof of his mouth, and then got to his knees. Getting to his feet required more effort, but he soon found himself standing, if a little unsteadily. He looked out the window. It was full dark outside, though the fog gave off its eldritch glow. It seemed agitated, roiling and swirling angrily against the windowpane. Small thought he could hear muted howls and moans coming from it.

He'd been wrong. The Arkham curse wasn't the result of anything natural, but of something occult, something loathsome and unfathomable.

The first Zephram Allen hadn't been delusional at all.

Small took a tentative step towards the door. His legs shook, but they'd hold him because he had to go after Dunwich, who had done—or was going to do—something stupid, something irreversible. Small gave a quick look around the library. A poker resting by the fireplace was the only thing he could use as a weapon if Willitts had come back. He was certain Willitts would try to stop him. The bastard was in this up to his neck. He must have had the Dunwiches' confidence, him and his sister and nephew. Small grabbed the poker and left the library at an unsteady trot.

The halls were quiet. Until he made it to the kitchen, Small saw no evidence of the disturbances he'd heard during his drugged stupor. The kitchen was a mess. Two maids, the cook, and Willitts all lay crumpled on the floor. The maids and the cook were unconscious, angry purple bruises on their temples. Willitts was on his back, lying in a pool of blood. Small felt his gorge rise at the hot, coppery smell of it, but he bent closer to have a look.

Willitts had been stabbed in the chest and belly, the wounds fierce and jagged, and he had blood under his fingernails. His eyes were open, and for once his customary sneer had melted into a new expression—that of surprise. Small kicked him in the side as he stepped over him and made for the house's back entrance.

Some small lamps hung on hooks near the house's wide back doors. Small kept the poker clamped under his arm as he lit one, nearly burning himself with the match as his hand trembled from foreboding and the aftereffects of being drugged. He didn't want to go outside in the fog—he could hear the wind in it, shrieking and howling as it gusted—but he had to go after Dunwich, and he could think of only one place where Dunwich might be.

Small pushed his way through the fog, struggling through the turbulent mass. He pulled his collar up and tucked his chin down to protect his nose and mouth, breathing in as little of the caustic, icy vapor as he could. It stung his eyes and made his skin feel raw, but he shoved on. He made it almost all the way to the crypt, skirting the trees and their vicious, grasping branches, before the miasma began to affect him.

The howls of the wind gradually resolved themselves into an angry, broken sobbing. Small stopped, skin crawling. In the silence between one sob and the next, Small thought he could hear his father's wet, bubbling breaths. He stood, frozen. His mother's sobs were getting closer, and his father's breaths were fading. He caught the flash of a crimson-streaked knife in the corner of his vision.

"Dunwich?" he said hoarsely.

 _"Franklin,"_ his mother crooned. Her voice was thick with rage and tears. Small closed his eyes when he heard the echoes of choked, whooping laughter coming from inside the crypt. Distorted by stone and the fog, it was still recognizable—Dunwich. Small set his jaw and opened his eyes. In front of him was the crypt and more gray-green fog, glowing outside the reach of his lamp. In his peripheral vision was the glimmer of a bloody knife. He took a step forward, ignoring his mother's shriek of anger.

His mother and father were dead and buried these thirteen years. Dunwich wasn't.

Small stepped into the crypt, past the open door. The wood was slick with some kind of clear substance, a foul-smelling jelly that reminded him of the burning tree sap. He didn't touch it, just kept moving through the fog. It settled lower to the ground here, but it smelled fouler and more unwholesome than ever, and after a dozen yards or so, he was able to see more of his surroundings. The crypt looked to be a cave with niches carved into the walls. The stone above and around him glowed with a spectral luminescence, and the fog around his feet added to the ambient light with its own sickly phosphorescence.

As he moved deeper into the cave, following the fading echoes of Dunwich's laughter, he passed by more dark alcoves recessed into the walls. One or two were sealed by crumbling brickwork, and for a moment he fancied he could almost hear a wet, desperate cough and the clink of chains muffled by a layer of brick. "For the love of God, Montresor," he murmured, and shivered. The lamp wobbled in his hand, then steadied as he moved on.

The wind and laughter faded away as he walked on, and then there was a new sound ahead, just around a bend in the cavern. Small stood stock-still as he heard a low, stuttering groan—Dunwich. Small dashed forward.

"Dunwich, no!" he yelled, voice rebounding off the stone walls. He skidded to a halt. Dunwich was kneeling in front of a pool of water so perfectly still it looked crystalline. When a beam of light from the lamp hit it, Small was momentarily dazzled by it.

Dunwich groaned again and dropped the knife. It landed with a soft thump on the body of a woman. Her chestnut hair shone in the lamplight, and her arms were stretched out, in a beseeching attitude. Blood trickled between Dunwich's fingers and spilled over her, staining her dirty white dress.

Small put the lamp down and started towards him, but he was too late.

Dunwich plunged his fingers into the gash in his stomach. He let out a pained gasp as he wrenched the gash wider and ripped something out—something that made a high, obscene mewling noise and writhed in his hand. Dunwich flung the thing away and slumped forward.

The thing thrashed on the stone floor, dragging itself back towards Dunwich, its screams a thin buzzing that pierced Small's head between the temples. He felt a rush of warmth on his upper lip and tasted blood as the noise reached a shrill, terrible crescendo.

Small lunged for the writhing godling and brought his heel down, crushing it. It burst wetly, the noise finally stopping as he ground it into a gelatinous smear—

—and then time slowed until it was caught between one moment and the next.

Everything expanded—the light, the fog, the air—then came rushing back into a single point of blackness. The blackness hung there, a menacing _nothingness_ of absolute cold and darkness, the very essence of madness. Everything seemed to bend toward it—even the air in his lungs and the heavy, terrified beat of his heart. Small fought the blackness' pull and drew in a thin, whistling breath. The faint sound seemed to break the blackness' hold. It flickered, edges wavering as it contracted in on itself before collapsing completely, winking out with a clap of thunder so immense it shook him to his core.

Small stood there for a moment, dazed, his very bones aching in the vast stillness the darkness had left behind, and then went to Dunwich.

"Hey," he said, kneeling down. He turned Dunwich over with shaking hands. Dunwich's eyes closed as Small tore off his jacket and ripped it into strips. He tried to be gentle as he pushed a glistening loop of intestine back inside and brought the gaping edges of Dunwich's stomach back together. Dunwich made a soft "ah!" sound, then lapsed into silence, breathing faintly. Small was red to the elbows by the time he had Dunwich wrapped tightly in his makeshift bandages.

"Hey," he said again. He got an arm under Dunwich's shoulders and lifted as gently as he could. Dunwich opened his eyes as Small gathered up his legs and stood.

"You'll be all right," Small said. "We're getting out of here, okay? And we're never coming back."

Dunwich smiled—his real smile—and went slack in Small's arms.

Small held him tight and carried him out of the crypt, into the dark Arkham night.

 

End.


End file.
